With numerous cases of litigation in the US based on the health impacts of poor indoor air quality, air quality expert Anthony Bernheim who was here recently says Australia needs to act quickly to identify the “chemicals of concern” for human health as well as to establish acceptable indoor concentrations for these materials.
Bernheim, a San Francisco-based architect and green design consultant with the firm SMWM, is a recognised expert in the subject of indooor air quality and associated health impacts. For the last 20 years he has specialised in design focused on ensuring good indoor air quality and occupant health, including work with the State of California Green Task Force to develop landmark testing methods and specifications for building materials, to exclude harmful compounds (VOCs and formeldehyde) from the interior of buildings. These indoor air quality specifications are now mandatory on all state projects.
Bernheim FAIA (Fellow of the American Institute of Architects) was here at the invitation of the Green Building Property Council of Australia to present seminars for the property industry and to meet with government officials in Sydney and Melbourne.
“The US experience has been that we ignore indoor air quality at a potential cost to our health and our hip-pocket, and the Australian property industry and governments must act now to identify the ‘chemicals of concern’ for human health as well as to establish acceptable indoor concentrations for these chemicals,” says Bernheim.
“It stands to reason that if we are spending about 90 percent of our time indoors, and breathing air that is two to five times more chemically concentrated and polluted than we do outside, we are being exposed to air that might impact our short- and long-term health and at the end of the day someone is going to pay a price for that.
“Building occupants are paying with their health as poor indoor air quality has been linked to short-term cold-like symptoms as well as long-term clinically verifiable diseases caused by some chemicals in buildings.
“But in the US, building owners, architects and contractors are also paying a price with numerous instances of litigation, primarily in the area of mould contamination known as microbial volatile organic compound or MVOC.”
In one case, the occupants of an office building claimed acts of negligence including: using materials that emitted formeldehyde and other noxious substances; failure to warn the occupants that the building was unsuitable for occupancy due to the noxious fumes and chemicals invading the premises; and failure to provide sufficient outside air to the building.
In other cases litigation has been taken against architects and contractors for claimed design and construction errors.
Bernheim says there are many interrelated factors that impact indoor air quality, including chemical emissions from the materials, furnishings and equipment that are put into the building; the occupants and their indoor activities; the ventilation systems and the building maintenance procedures.
He notes that the four principles of good indoor air quality design are: source control - keep the potential pollutants out of the building; ventilation control - provide high levels of ventilation to dissipate and remove indoor air pollutants; building and indoor air quality commissioning - building commissioning is a process used to check and verify that the building was built as designed and that it operates as intended. IAQ commissioning goes further in that it requires that some air quality testing be performed in the building pre- and post-occupancy; and building maintenance - keep the building interior clean and maintain the building systems during occupancy and don’t introduce more chemicals through cleaning.
Projects which Bernheim has worked on include the San Francisco main library where he selected low emission materials based on early material emission testing to achieve unparelleled air quality and the Capitol area east end office complex in Sacramento, California, for the State Department of Education where he worked in collaboration with state agencies to develop a new specification section that set strict test requirements and maximum allowable chemical concentrations for building materials to exclude harmful compounds from the interior of the building. Based on the success of this project, the state has changed its green building standards and now requires the implementation of these indoor air quality specifications on all their future projects.n