As public awareness about the importance of indoor air quality grows the construction industry had to adapt to satisfy customers that their buildings are safe and healthy to live in. There has been a number of schemes developed for the construction industry which ensure that the newly constructed building do not represent a long term health risk and environmentally friendly and economical to run. In the United Kingdom the most popular construction scheme is Breeam which places a large number of requirements of the participating construction companies. In the USA the equivalent type of scheme is called LEED.
I have carried out an indoor air quality testing in accordance with the bream requirements on a newly constructed building block for the Strode College. The building under assessment was a three storey educational building consisting of three offices on the ground floor, seven classrooms and offices on the first floor and nine lecture and study rooms on the second floor. The rooms had modern synthetic carpets, plasterboard partition walls and modern suspended fibreboard ceilings. The campus buildings are situated in a rural area surrounded by agricultural fields to the East and North and residential housing to the West and South. There are no industrial sources of pollution in close vicinity to the development.
Sampling of formaldehyde was carried out in strict accordance with the ISO 16000-3:2011 Indoor Air Part 3: Determination of formaldehyde and other carbonyl compounds in indoor air and test chamber air – Active sampling method and BS EN ISO 16000-2:2006 Indoor Air Part 2: sampling strategy for formaldehyde.
Sampling of total volatile organic compounds (TVOC) was carried out in strict accordance with the ISO 16000-6:2011 Indoor Air Part 6: Determination of volatile organic compounds in indoor air and test chambers by active sampling on Tenax Ta sorbent, thermal desorption and gas chromatography using MS or MS-FID and BS EN ISO 16000-5:2007 Indoor Air Part 5: Sampling strategy for volatile organic compounds (VOCs).
To obtain a representative picture of the indoor air quality in the building I have collected twelve samples across the three floors. Following the analysis of the samples I have concluded that he average concentration of formaldehyde and total volatile organic compounds was in both cases below 60 ug/m3. The development has passed the indoor air quality test and was awarded bream point.
By Tomas Gabor
