Nazaroff warns of climate change impacts on indoor air quality
"We spend almost all of our time indoors and this can impact public health in a negative way," the University of California's William Nazaroff told environmentalresearchweb. "If we don't pay attention to this issue, the forces of climate change will make things worse."
Nazaroff reviewed the literature in order to bring together a number of elements that have been studied separately. The paper, published in Environmental Research Letters (ERL) , identifies three classes of factors that have important influence on indoor air quality: pollutant attributes, building characteristics and human behaviour. Both pollutant sources and removal processes govern pollutant concentrations indoors, and these concentrations in combination with human occupancy determine exposure.
According to the review, climate change may cause an increase in the concentrations of certain outdoor pollutants, increasing indoor exposure. It could also affect indoor air quality indirectly through human responses to climate change, such as lower ventilation rates to reduce energy use, or the increased use of air conditioning due to warmer conditions.