Determination of exposure-response relationships for emissions from building products

Building products have been shown to affect the perceived indoor air qualit y in buildings. Consequently, there is a need for characterizing the emissi ons from building products in sensory terms to evaluate their impact on the perceived air quality. Determining the exposure-response relationship betw een concentration of the emission from a building product and human respons e is recommended. A practical method is proposed based on an air-dilution s ystem connected to the exhaust of a ventilated small-scale test chamber. Th e method was used to determine the exposure-response relationships for eigh t building products. For each building product, samples were placed in a te st chamber. A typical room was used as a reference to calculate a building- realistic area-specific ventilation rate in the test chamber. A sensory pan el assessed the immediate acceptability of polluted air at four different c oncentrations 3, 10 and 29 days after samples of the building products were placed in the test chambers. The exposure-response relationships show that the impact of dilution of polluted air on the perceived air quality varies between building products. For some building products it may only be possi ble in practice to improve the perceived air quality marginally by increasi ng dilution. The results of the present study suggest that for such buildin g products, source control is recommended as the remedy for poor indoor air quality, rather than an increase of the ventilation rate.