Senior Researcher - Housing Performance, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, Ottawa, Ontario
Pages: 13 Published: Jan 1989
The Canadian federal and provincial health ministers released a document in 1987 entitled “Exposure Guidelines for Residential Indoor Air Quality.” These guidelines establish the maximum recommended concentrations of nine pollutants (or pollutant groups) and a range of relative humidities, often with short-term and long-term levels separately identified. No simple measurement can determine whether a residence does and will continue to meet the guidelines. An analysis protocol is needed to predict concentration peaks and averages under conditions that are different from those that occurred during the test. To perform these analyses, many measurements and observations other than the simple point-in-time concentrations must be made. They include: instantaneous air change rates, taken at the same time and point as the pollutant concentrations; envelope leakage and effective ventilation areas; the weather during the test; and a definition of the exposure classification of the residence. This paper develops the logic for, and presents, a proposed protocol and subsidiary measurements and observations that could serve as a first attempt at meeting the needs of such a prediction technique. It is based on the single-cell model of Wadden and Scheff, plus the averaging techniques of Yuill, in addition to a few concepts developed by the author. Research needs include a better definition of non-ventilation removal mechanisms and source variability, as well as verification that the method adequately predicts both long-term average concentrations and critical short-term peaks.
prediction, exposure, pollutant concentration, indoor air quality, analysis, field tests, sources, source strengths, ventilation, effective ventilation, equivalent ventilation rates, air change rates, time constants, parametrics, modeling, airtightness, reactivity, mixing factor
Paper ID: STP10154S