Indoor Air Quality for People and Plants

摘要

The volume is based on a three day conference held in the summer of 1987 atDartmouth College and sponsored by their Rockefeller Center for the Social Sciences. The aim of the conference was to explore the possibility of using plants to detect and monitor indoor air pollution. A group of psychologists, public health researchers, and botanists was convened to examine the potential for using plants and other biological species as indicators of whether the indoor air of a building is 'healthy' or 'sick'. The latter are defined by the frequency with which people, who occupy these buildings, report symptoms of ill health; such as eye irritation, headaches, and allergic reactions that might be caused by specific contaminants, physical variables or combinations thereof in the indoor air. Two broad topics are covered in the volume: air quality in sick buildings and bioassays of air quality in nonhuman systems. The work on sick buildings and human health is presented in the first part of the book, while research of a more biological character is addressed in the second part.