INDOOR AND OUTDOOR DESIGN CONDITIONS 4.

27

4.10 SICK BUILDING SYNDROME AND INDOOR AIR QUALITY

Sick building syndrome is a kind of building-related illness that has received public attention since
the 1970s. ASHRAE (1987) defined the sick building as “. . . a building in which a significant
number (more than 20 percent) of building occupants report illness perceived as being building re-
lated. This phenomenon, also known as ‘sick building syndrome’ is characterized by a range of
symptoms including, but not limited to, eye, nose, and throat irritation, dryness of mucous mem-
branes and skin, nose bleeds, skin rash, mental fatigue, headache, cough, hoarseness, wheezing,
nausea, and dizziness. Within a given building, there usually will be some commonality among the
symptoms manifested as well as temporal association between occupancy in the building and ap-
pearance of symptoms.” If there are signs of actual illnesses, these illness are classified as building-
related illnesses.
Poor indoor air quality (IAQ) is the dominant factor that causes sick building syndrome. Indoor
air quality is defined as an indication of harmful concentrations of the indoor air contaminants that
affect the health of the occupants or the degree of satisfaction of a substantial majority (80 percent
or more) of occupants exposed to such an indoor environment. Poor control of the indoor air tem-
perature and relative humidity are causes of discomfort symptoms. They may also increase the
indoor air contaminants. However, unsatisfactory indoor temperature and indoor relative humidity
are only indirect causes of poor indoor air quality.
National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) of the United States (1989),
according to the results of 529 building investigations between 1971 and 1988, and Health and
Welfare Canada (HWC), according to the results of 1362 building investigations between 1984
and 1989, classified the reasons for sick building syndrome as follows:

NIOSH, 529 Buildings HWC, 1362 Buildings

No. of buildings Percent No. of buildings Percent
Inadequate ventilation 280 53 710 52
Indoor contaminants 80 15 165 12
Outdoor contaminants 53 10 125 9
Biological contaminant 27 5 6 0.4
Building fabric contamination 21 4 27 2
Unknown sources 68 13 329 24

Inadequate ventilation includes lack of outdoor air, poor air distribution, poor thermal control, and
inadequate maintenance; and it is the primary cause of indoor air quality. The survey found 70 to 80
percent of the investigated buildings had no known problems. Effective operation and control of the
HVAC&R system will be discussed in later chapters.
In the United States, most people spend about 90 percent of their time indoors. The purpose of
specifying the indoor design conditions in the design documents is to provide the occupants with a
satisfactory indoor environment at optimum cost.
After the energy crisis in 1973, a lower outdoor ventilation rate, a tighter building shell, and the
use of variable-air-volume (VAV) systems at part-load operation may reduce the amount of outdoor
air intake significantly. Indoor air quality therefore has become one of the critical HVAC&R prob-
lems especially in commercial buildings since the 1980s.

Indoor Air Contaminants

Based on the results of the field investigations of three office buildings by Bayer and Black in 1988,
the indoor air contaminants that relate to indoor air quality and the symptoms of the sick building
syndrome are mainly the following:
4.32 CHAPTER FOUR

of 0.5 m and larger or 65 particles/ft3 (2295 particles/ft3) of a size 5.0 m and larger.
Class 100,000. Particle count not to exceed 100,000 particles/ft3 (3,531,500 particles/m3) of
a size of 0.5 m and larger or 700 particles/ft3 (24,720 particles/ft3) of a size 5.0 m and larger.

Refer to Federal Standard 209E for more details.

Since workers in these clean rooms wear protective gowns and hats, in order to provide these air
cleanliness classes, a year-round constant temperature and associated relative humidity and a speci-
fied unidirectional airflow should be maintained. High-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters and
ultra-low-penetration air (ULPA) filters should be installed in the air conditioning systems. Special
building materials with hard and clean surfaces should be used as the building envelope. More de-
tails are covered in Chap. 30.

4.12 SOUND LEVEL

Sound and Sound Level

Sound can be defined as a variation in pressure due to vibration in an elastic medium such as air. A
vibrating body generates pressure waves, which spread by alternate compression and rarefaction of
the molecules within the transmitting medium. Airborne sound is a variation of air pressure, with
atmospheric pressure as the mean value. Because sound is transmitted by compression and expan-
sion of molecules, it cannot travel in a vacuum. The denser the material, the faster the traveling
speed of a sound wave. The velocity of a sound wave in air is approximately 1130 fps. In water, it is
about 4500 fps and in steel 15,000 fps.
Noise is any unwanted sound. In air systems, noise should be compensated for, either by attenu-
ation (the process of reducing the amount of sound that reaches the space) or by masking it with
other, less objectionable sounds.

Sound Power Level and Sound Pressure Level

Sound power is the ability to radiate power from a sound source excited by an energy input. The in-
tensity of sound power is the power output from a sound source expressed in watts (W). Because of
the wide variation of sound output — from the threshold hearing level of 10 12 W to a level of
108 W, generated by the launching of a Saturn rocket, a ratio of 1020 to 1 — it is more appropriate
and convenient to use a logarithmic expression to define sound power level, i.e.,
w
L w  10 log re 1 pW
10 12 W (4.28)
where Lw  sound power level, dB
w  sound source power output, W
Here 10 12 W, or 1 pW (picowatt), is the international reference base, and re indicates the reference
base.
The human ear and microphones are pressure-sensitive. Analogous to the sound power level, the
sound pressure level is defined as
p
L p  20 log re 20 Pa (4.29)
2  105 Pa
where Lp  sound pressure level, dB
p  sound pressure, Pa