Evaluation of health benefits for improving indoor air quality in workplace.
In contrast to a majority of reported damage-cost literature being focused on outdoor pollution, this paper describes the development of a protocol that links population exposure data with reported epidemiological concentration-response coefficients. A change in indoor particulate level is expressed as a change in total exposure levels, which is then linked with a corresponding change in ambient particulate concentrations before evaluating the associated health benefits. In this study, the development of protocol is illustrated by using a typical office building environment and daily time activity patterns of office occupants in Hong Kong. Our results indicate that some benefit gains for the owners-employers and the society would be anticipated if certain filter set configurations had been adopted. However, the amount of benefit gains for the owners-employers is shown to be increased with the average salary level of employees and the duration of their stay in offices.
Chau
C K
CK
Department of Building Services Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR. beckchau@polyu.edu.hk
Hui
W K
WK
Tse
M S
MS
D000388:Air / Q000592:standards*; D016902:Air Pollution, Indoor; D006723:Hong Kong / Q000453:epidemiology; D006801:Humans; D009026:Mortality; D016273:Occupational Exposure / Q000517:prevention & control; D010343:Patient Admission / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D017132:Workplace