Our buildings make us sick
Recently, a report on buildings and their effect on our health was published by the Health and Environment Alliance, short ‘HEAL’. In this blog post I summarized some important facts researched by HEAL to give you a short overview. The report is very interesting and contains a lot more information than I included here. If you are interested in finding out more, I highly suggest you to read the full report! Click on this link to review the report in more detail!
‘People living in unhealthy buildings are 40% more likely to suffer from asthma.’ (HEAL, 2018)
Similar to the EPA, also this report states that asthma can become worse by surrounding ourselves with poor indoor air quality. The EPA also stresses, that symptoms caused by bad indoor air quality are sometimes hard to identify, due to the reason that they are similar to those from a e.g. cold. Therefore it is recommended to always check where and under which circumstances the symptoms occur, so it is easier to differentiate between viral diseases and symptoms from possible exposure to harmful indoor air pollution.
Long-term effects are likely to occur especially with children
High indoor humidity levels are affecting children’s health and, as HEAL stresses, ‘are strongly linked to childhood illnesses.’ (HEAL, 2018) Especially asthma, bronchitis, coughing and wheezing can result from poor living conditions. They specifically point out that there was a difference observed, between children living in damp homes, which are more likely to be affected and children living in dry homes.
Sick buildings affect our mental health
Especially in low-income populations, indoor air pollution caused by building materials influences the stress level of people, including a constant worry about the consequences related to their living condition and environment.
Premature deaths caused by buildings expelling unhealthy gases
The report stresses that more people die in winter than during summer, where poor housing is responsible for up to 40%. Additionally, the probability of dying during winter is higher in countries with the worst housing conditions.
Decreasing productivity
As already stated several times in my blog posts (see e.g. ‘Why the air you are breathing indoors is slowly killing you‘, ‘Bad indoor air quality is more than just CO2‘), bad indoor air quality is definitely responsible for a decrease in productivity and efficiency. Especially in work areas with many people working in one room, indoor air quality becomes worse very fast, due to an increase in volatile organic compounds. The report by HEAL also states that the well-being in general is affected, leading to a productivity loss of about 6–9%.
Full report
[Update: There is a great video by the company Velux - raising the awareness and stressing the importance for keeping an eye on your indoor air quality at home]
Another great video is here, better stay more time outdoors, means in healthy environments like a park or a forest.
Or here
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References
Uniform Resource Locators
All about sensors. Bad indoor air quality is more than just CO2, retrieved from: https://allaboutsensors825447014.wordpress.com/2018/04/17/bad-indoor-air-quality-is-more-than-just-co2/
All about sensors. Why the air you are breathing indoors is killing you, retrieved from: https://allaboutsensors825447014.wordpress.com/2018/03/31/why-the-air-you-are-breathing-indoors-is-killing-you-slowly/
Environmental Protection Agency. Indoor Air Quality (IAQ), retrieved from: https://www.epa.gov/indoor-air-quality-iaq/introduction-indoor-air-quality
PDF document
Health and Environment Alliance. HEAL Briefing, retrieved from: https://www.env-health.org/IMG/pdf/-9.pdf
Video
The Velux Group. The Indoor Generation by VELUX, retrieved from: https://youtu.be/a5NuUPlZ6Wo
Naava.io. The Indoor Generation from:
Or See Here
