Editorial

Abstract

After 10 years with the Editorial office of Indoor Air, I will be stepping down soon from my position as Editor (sooner or later there will be a change!). In my final Editorials for the journal, I will give my views on the state of the art of indoor air science. My main interest in indoor air science is to find the role of indoor air for health (including comfort and productivity). I do not find excellent measurements (mapping) of contaminants in indoor air or new technical solutions very interesting, unless they are accompanied by reports of human responses – this bias is shaped by my aforementioned interest. Regular readers of Indoor Air will note that my bias has not influenced the selection of articles to be published. This selection is only based on whether the topic is within the scope of the journal, and whether reviewers have judged the article as being representative of good scientific research. However, after some 40 years of IAQ science (thermal climate has been a topic for even longer), we still do not know which pollutants are responsible for Sick Building Syndrome (SBS), and there is also little or no knowledge on the pollutants which have caused the increase in allergies/asthma. I think this is due to a focus on ‘old’ pollutants, classical outdoor air VOCs, the wrong microbial agents, and mass or number of particles. And a lack of multidisciplinarity. There have been very few studies throughout history, where there has been a true collaboration between health sciences and other relevant sciences such as engineering (in contrast to medical doctors playing engineers, or engineers playing medical doctors). So what we need is more collaboration between disciplines, and a shift in focus on the pollutants studied. The focus should be on ‘modern’ pollutants that can possibly help to explain the increase in ‘modern’ diseases such as SBS and asthma/allergies. As indoor air exposure is the most important environmental exposure today, a number of other new health effects should be considered. In scientific literature, there are links between indoor air exposure and diabetes, obesity, neurodevelopmental disorders, semen quality, etc. But in this literature, these exposures are usually not considered to be indoor air exposure! Indeed, as I have pointed out earlier – indoor air sciences have barely begun!