Editorial

Abstract

Between the March issue of 1999 and the December issue of 2007, the Indoor Air has published more than 437 articles, among which the word ‘ventilation’ has appeared in the ‘title’ of 30 of them, and in ‘abstract’ of 140. There are 39 articles where the word of ‘ventilation’ is present in both the ‘title’ and ‘abstract’. The articles published have covered, in fact, as wide a spectrum of topics as most can possibly study for the role of ventilation in relation to the quality of indoor air and effect on human health. Categorized based on the direct reading of listed title and the overall objectives delivered, themes of these publications have included the review (7)** Number of articles in the category. , ventilation and pollutant removal (12), ventilation and indoor chemistry (1), maintenance of ventilation systems (1), ventilation and health (5), ventilation vs. human response (5), ventilation and indoor environmental quality (7), and others (2). The review articles published have discussed issues both as focused as ‘PERSONALIZED VENTILATION’ and as general as ‘HUMAN RESPONSE TO VENTILATION’. In the topic of ‘ventilation and pollutant removal’, the Journal has published investigations conducted in a great diversity of indoor environments as well as information generated through either computational and theoretical modeling or direct measurements. As human welfare has been historically the origin of public concerns for indoor air quality, a higher percentage of studies have reported how ventilation, either in terms of efficiency or maintenance, may affect human health and how the human response to changing indoor air quality can be more sensitively detected. An obvious phenomenon is also observed in most recent years as studies present the rising attention on researching how ventilation system may better perform, and therefore improve the overall quality of indoor environment. Limited research has successfully demonstrated how ventilation influences the reactions of indoor air pollutants, and the thirst for gaining a more in-depth understanding cannot be more apparent as the global climate change has challenged an ever-changing profile of outdoor air, the direct parent source of indoor air in most circumstances. As needed and sought-after as the previously mentioned topic is probably the theme on ‘effective maintenance and control strategy for operating ventilation system’ wherever there is one, a topic not adequately addressed before in the Journal, but likely to be of great desire in the time to come. The aforementioned statistics is merely a conveniently available, yet much-too superficial way of highlighting how the notion of ‘ventilation’ by itself has dominated a significant percentage of the discussion for the research of ‘indoor air quality’ over the past decade. In this issue, articles are, again, assembled from either theoretical or field study, from system evaluation or human response when the role of ventilation is discussed in the aspiration of good indoor air. Previously available mechanism and apparatus is also being examined in a new setting. Judging from the recent publications, the research activities orientated toward studying the fundamentals and implication of ventilation to achieve or sustain good indoor air quality are likely to remain as the focal interest in the foreseeable future.