The Effect on Indoor Air Quality Improvement by Ventilation Rate in Newly Built Apartment

The recent indoor air quality problem in a newly-built apartment house is resulted from the improvement of airtightness performance and the use of the building material contained harmful chemical substances. As a result, these cause indoor air quality gradually to become worse and the harmful effect on occupant health called Sick House Syndrome. The most effective solution to improve the indoor air quality is to encourage the use of green building material. However, if the house is built with general building material, ventilation with outdoor air is alternative to dilute the pollutant concentration. The purpose of this re-search is to find optimum ventilation time in a newly-built apartment house at which the ventilatoris installed. It is found that the HCHO and toluene concentrations are remarkably decreased with the elapse of ventilation time and the concentration reduction rate is increased with increment of air change rate after one hour after operating the ventilator.