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Establishing that the indoor air is of poor quality or even toxic, is a difficult task. There may be hundreds of chemicals suspended in the air you breathe. They may exist in a gaseous state, in tiny liquid droplet form or in the solid state of fine particles. You won't see or smell most of them. You can ask an expert to measure indoor pollution levels, but he or she is likely to look only for the most common chemicals, as the cost of measuring all is prohibitive.
You face health risks every day, just by driving to work, for example. Some risks are unavoidable. When it comes to providing a healthy environment at home, the news is good. You can improve indoor air quality with simple measures. Even better would be to plan a new home with the right intentions in mind. Ask your architect. He or she should be aware of the problem and, for example, may have easy access to emission data of building products, or can plan efficient ventilation systems.
Poor indoor air quality is a worldwide problem
Indoor Air Pollution
Introduction
Have you ever heard of the Sick Building Syndrome? Probably not, because this term is fairly new to the media. If the papers or the television pick up on this or related subject, then it is most likely very dramatic and in connection with an office or public building, where unsuspecting workers and visitors caught the mysterious Legionnaires' disease, for example.
It doesn't have to be so dramatic, though. I remember my time as air traffic control instructor, when I performed my duties in a building that was full of computers 'driving' the simulated blips of aircraft across the radar screens. To extend the life of the expensive electronics, the climate was controlled, and to save energy, the pre-cooled air was recycled - with it the bacteria, the viruses and the airborne chemicals. I never had so many 'sickies,' i.e. days off work due to illness, than I had during that time. Worst of all, I wasn't the only one. Where is the saving?
At a workplace it is fairly easy to point the finger at circumstances that lead to outbreaks of certain disorders. At home it is another story. We spend 90% of our time indoors, 65% of this time we are at home. The very young, the elderly and chronically ill people spend even more time in their homes.
Recent investigations found that the air people breathe in their homes is likely to be two to five times more polluted than the air they inhale outside. And, unfortunately, the pollution is not necessarily of the type someone can see or smell - other than the 'pleasant' smell of the new home.
For years the health authorities concentrated on the negative impacts of outdoor pollution on human well-being. Only recently have they 'discovered' what has always been a threat to public health: poor indoor air quality. As a matter of fact, indoor air pollution is ranked in the top five environmental risks to our health. Just one example, the US Environmental Protection Authority estimates that 6% of homes have elevated levels of radon, a radioactive gas, which is believed to cause the death of approximately 14,000 US citizens per year.
Ironically, modern buildings increase the likelihood of poor indoor air quality. The need to conserve energy led to almost airtight buildings. Door and window frames are made to fit as perfectly as possible. Insulation and weather-stripping are the norm. Fine, but the draughty old shack had the advantage of allowing much more air exchange between indoors and outdoors, thus reducing the concentration of pollutants. If we want to keep indoor air pollutants at a minimum in modern homes, we have to pretend to have a leaky home by installing air vents and exhaust fans.
Since occupants of a building breathe the indoor air, it shouldn't come as a surprise that respiratory problems are the most common ill effects of indoor pollutants, and lung diseases are the third leading cause of death in the US. Health professionals, however, become more and more aware of other acute effects that involve the toxic characteristics of substances.
For example, each substance by itself may be harmless or below the acceptable level, but a combination of two or more can lead to health disorders. The health authorities observe an increase of allergies in the general population with symptoms that are non-specific to known allergens. Medical professionals describe a reaction by patients to a combination of several chemicals as Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS). As you can imagine, finding the cause and subsequently a cure can be quite difficult. Furthermore, the long-term health risks are presently not well understood.
What is to blame? Your first answer probably includes the obvious hazardous chemicals in cleaning products and pesticides. There are, however, numerous sources that aren't so obvious and numerous sources that science only just recently became aware of and, I can only speculate, numerous sources that scientists either don't know about or haven't declared hazardous to health as yet.
Well known triggers of human allergies, however, are natural allergens such as animal dander, dust mites and pollen. Also, viruses and bacteria proliferate in an environment of recycled and climate controlled air, and poor ventilation and high humidity accelerates the growth of moulds. As mentioned earlier, radon has emerged as a major threat to public health. The radioactive gas enters your home through cracks in the floor and walls.
Headache, nausea, dizziness and irritations to the eye, nose, throat and skin may be caused by the many chemicals that are used in the manufacture of carpets, furniture and upholstery. The adhesives that keep the floor and wall coverings and the laminates on furniture in place will release toxic gases for many years. Household cleaning products, perfumed deodorizers, paints, insecticides, to name a few, contain potentially harmful chemicals and contribute to indoor air pollution.
Gas or wood heating and cooking appliances produce, amongst other combustion products, the dangerous gases carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide. The odourless carbon monoxide replaces oxygen in the blood and may cause fatigue, headache, nausea, dizziness and even death. Nitrogen dioxide irritates the eyes and the mucous membranes of nose and throat.
In India, where 80% of households use solid fuel, there are estimates that half a million children die annually from indoor air pollution, especially from acute respiratory infections. The figure for sub-Saharan Africa is roughly the same. In Latin American countries, where one quarter of households use solid fuels, an estimated 30,000 people die each year from acute respiratory infections attributable to indoor air quality.
So much about the myth of clean country air. In fact, nearly three-fifths of the total global exposure to particulate matter, one of the most ubiquitous air pollutants, occurs in the rural areas of developing countries. Worldwide, this translates into as many as three million deaths a year.
As always seems to be the case, it is the world's poorest people who suffer most. As a rule, they face a cocktail of risk factors of which air pollution is just one; others include malnutrition, unsafe water and poor health care infrastructure. Malnutrition, unsafe water and use of solid fuels indoors together cause over one quarter of all deaths in the least developed countries.
Children are of particular concern.
They are especially vulnerable to high levels of air pollution. The Global Burden of Disease study conducted by WHO in 1990, has clearly shown that 30% of the estimated number of deaths from all diseases occur before 15 years of age, but for acute respiratory diseases, the figure is twice as high. A WHO Task Force on the Protection of Children's Environmental Health has been created to address these problems.
Despite increasing knowledge about harmful health effects of air pollution, preventive action is often slow to follow. "WHO would like to provide its 191 Member States with irrefutable evidence that air pollution causes disproportionately heavy burden of disease," explains Dr Michael Repacholi, WHO Coordinator, Occupational and Environmental Health. "We'd like to provide them with a sound environmental policy framework and actions applicable to different settings and to different socio-economic conditions. In short, we'd like to provide them with a proper strategy to eliminate avoidable air pollutants and thus reduce this disease burden in a cost-effective way."
This week's meeting in Geneva identified major peaks to be scaled on the way to creating a WHO strategy on air pollution and health. In public health terms, air pollution is not an exact science. Often, health effects that may be attributable to air pollution can also be closely linked to other risk factors. That is why establishing a health effects database on air pollution is seen by WHO as an important stepping stone towards achieving these goals. But first, all parties involved should hammer out a unified methodology for collecting comparable data world wide to support sound, science-based assessments of health impacts.
The database will help to identify hotspots of health-threatening air pollution levels and populations of high risk. It will also help keep track of major sources of pollution and their effect on public health. Economic costs to society and individuals of health impairment due to air pollution, as well as cost-effective intervention strategies, will also be addressed by WHO.
With permission: press release WHO/56, 14 September 2000
As many as one billion people, mostly women and children, are regularly exposed to levels of indoor air pollution exceeding WHO guidelines by up to 100 times.
This startling statistic was quoted at a WHO strategy meeting on Air Quality and Health held in Geneva this week.
Air pollution is a major environmental health problem affecting both developed and developing countries. This is a truly global concern involving ambient air quality in cities as well as indoor air quality including the workplace, in both rural and urban areas. The highest air pollution exposures occur in the indoor environment particularly in developing countries. Cooking and heating with solid fuels, that is wood, coal, dung, crop residues and charcoal, still occurs for over half the world's population. A deadly combination of solid fuels, inefficient stoves and poor ventilation triggers off a complex mix of health damaging pollutants in homes.
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