OLFACTORY COMFORT AWARENESS (OCA) - A NEW UNIT?

摘要

It is generally known that the perceived air quality has a great impact on the well-being of room occupants.Engineers tend to rely completely on measuring the absence of pollutants aiming for objectively clean air, but neglect the subjective awareness of room occupants or how they perceive indoor air quality. Neurophysiological and psychological research has shown that the hedonic value often plays the key role in determining that perception. It has to be understood that not only thermal conditions but also the sense ofolfaction play major roles.This lack of awareness of the interactions between thermal and olfactory conditions frequently accounts for the dissatisfaction rate. This paper will concentrate on demonstrating the influence of the hedonic value on room occupants and on how to achieve air that from an olfactory perspective is perceived to be natural. This is different from the commonly known, perceived "artificial" air. Furthermore, it will show how important it is to evaluate healthy buildings not only for the absence of negative odors as expressed by the olfand decipol units. Olfactory comfort goes far beyond this scale and, therefore, it is necessary to introduce a new unit called olfactory comfort awareness OCA. OCA is a score between -10 and 10 that expresses the grade of olfactory comfort the room occupants perceive. This measure does not replace the well-accepted decipol unit but complements it, emphasising the importance not only of the absence of negative influencing odorants, but also the importance of olfactory comfort as measured by the new unit.