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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Built Environ.
Sec. Indoor Environment
Volume 11 - 2025 |
doi: 10.3389/fbuil.2025.1510965
Health-demand ventilation control strategy in northern Chinese homes: how much ventilation do we need to protect occupants' health
Provisionally accepted- 1 Tianjin University of Technology, Tianjin, China
- 2 Tianjin University of Commerce, Tianjin, Tianjin Municipality, China
- 3 Tianjin University, Tianjin, China
- 4 Aalto University, Otakaari, Ostrobothnia, Finland
Indoor air quality in dwellings has particular importance regarding occupants' health.Ventilation is an important means to improve indoor air quality and guarantee occupants' health. We utilized CO2 produced by occupants to measure air exchange rate (i.e., the volumetric out-to-indoor airflow rate divided by building volume, h -1 ) in Chinese homes, which were then linked to health outcomes like asthma and sick building syndrome symptom. Each 0.1 h -1 increase in air exchange rate at nights was associated with adjusted odds ratios of 0.97 (Confidence Interval (CI): 0.94-1.00) for rhinitis among children and 0.95 (95% CI: 0.91-0.98) for mucosal sick building symptom among adults. Finally, we proposed a "health-demand" ventilation control strategy according to the relationship between air exchange rate and health outcomes. Air exchange rate of 2.5 h -1 and 6.5 h -1 was suggested to deal with sick building syndrome symptoms among adults and rhinitis symptoms among children, respectively.
Keywords: Air exchange rate, Carbon Dioxide, Sick Building Syndrome, Asthma and allergy, Dose-response relationship
Received: 14 Oct 2024; Accepted: 23 Jan 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wang, Hou, Fu, Tian, Feng, Kosonen and Sun. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Yuexia Sun, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China
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