Indoor Environment and Symptoms in Office Building

办公楼室内环境及症状

• 批准号: 6765077
• 负责人: MARK J MENDELL
• 金额: $ 38.23万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF CALIF-LAWRENC BERKELEY LAB
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2004
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2004-09-01 至 2007-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/6765077
• 关键词: air filtration; air sampling /monitoring; clinical research; data management; environmental air flow; environmental engineering; epidemiology; humidity; occupational health /safety; organic chemicals; sign /symptom; temperature; work site

DESCRIPTION: The primary objective of this project is to produce new scientific knowledge about environmental risks for symptoms among workers in office environments. These findings will provide new understanding of how to reduce health risks for the 70% of the U.S. workforce in indoor environments, through improved design, operation, and maintenance of buildings. The project will involve analyses of the existing Building Assessment and Survey Evaluation (BASE) dataset collected by the U.S. EPA from a representative sample of U.S. office buildings, supplemented by additional data to be acquired from outside sources. The BASE dataset contains environmental measurements, building characterizations, and human questionnaire responses from 100 U.S. office buildings and 4,326 occupants. These data, the only such U.S. data available, have received little analysis and represent a unique opportunity to benefit indoor workers. The specific aims of this project are to (1) characterize the relationships between outdoor air ventilation rates and symptoms among indoor workers, using improved ventilation rate estimates, in order to support health-protective ventilation standards; (2) assess risks for irritation symptoms among indoor workers from sources of indoor chemical emissions such as surface materials; (3) assess evidence for irritation symptoms from products of indoor chemical reactions between reactive gases and organic compounds, by analyzing BASE data on symptoms and volatile organic compounds with newly obtained data on ozone concentrations and filter characteristics; (4) assess evidence for effect modification by the ventilation rate of the risk of irritant symptoms from indoor pollutant sources or indoor chemical reactions; (5) estimate the relationships between indoor thermal conditions and symptoms in indoor workers, using various metrics for temperature and humidity, in order to explore discrepancies between current building operation guidelines and research findings; (6) calculate normative distributions of symptom prevalence in U.S. office buildings to produce guidelines that assist building managers and investigators in the interpretation of symptoms reported in specific indoor work settings; and (7) combine statistical models produced in this project into comprehensive models and, based on a synthesis of overall BASE findings with other current knowledge, summarize identified risk factors and remaining research questions.

产品说明：该项目的主要目标是产生关于办公室环境中工人症状的环境风险的新科学知识。这些发现将为如何通过改善建筑物的设计、运营和维护来降低美国70%的室内劳动力的健康风险提供新的认识。该项目将分析美国环保署从美国办公楼代表性样本中收集的现有建筑评估和调查评估（BASE）数据集，并补充从外部来源获取的额外数据。BASE数据集包含来自100座美国办公楼和4，326名居住者的环境测量，建筑特征和人类问卷调查。这些数据是美国唯一可用的此类数据，几乎没有得到分析，代表了一个使室内工作者受益的独特机会。 该项目的具体目标是：（1）利用改进的通风率估计值，确定室外空气通风率与室内工人症状之间的关系，以支持健康保护通风标准;（2）评估室内工人因表面材料等室内化学排放源而出现刺激症状的风险;（3）通过分析关于症状和挥发性有机化合物的基本数据以及新获得的关于臭氧浓度和过滤器特性的数据，评估来自反应性气体和有机化合物之间的室内化学反应产物的刺激症状的证据;（4）通过通风率评估室内污染源或室内化学反应引起的刺激症状风险的影响修正证据;（5）使用温度和湿度的各种度量来估计室内热条件与室内工作者的症状之间的关系，（6）计算美国办公楼中症状流行率的标准分布，以产生指导方针，帮助建筑物管理者和调查人员解释在特定室内工作环境中报告的症状;（7）将本项目中产生的联合收割机统计模型组合成综合模型，并基于综合BASE结果与其他现有知识，总结已识别的风险因素和剩余的研究问题。