Adults breathe in 17,000 litres of air per day and spend 90% of their lives indoor ...

... most general household chemicals are not adequately tested for human health effects ...

... poor indoor air quality is the main cause of asthma in Australia.

EKO Building Biology specialise in creating healthy indoor environments.

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Air quality assessment and sampling
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Australians spend 90 per cent of their time indoors, 7 per cent in cars and only 3 per cent outdoors (CSIRO, 1998), yet focus remains on outdoor air quality. Since the energy crisis in the early seventies, houses and buildings have been designed to conserve energy usage by restricting air inflow; this has resulted in much poorer indoor air quality.

 

The CSIRO estimates that the cost of poor internal air quality in Australia may be as high as $12 billion per year (Brown 1998).

In Australia there is no national strategy for indoor air quality (Bijlsma, 2008), it is left up to individuals to monitor and research their own potential indoor health threats; this is often made difficult by the lack of sufficient testing of harmful yet common indoor chemicals and by hidden health sources such as mould, vermin, fine particles and gas leaks.

“CSIRO estimates that occupants of new homes may be exposed to many times the maximum allowable limits of some indoor air pollutants” (Your Home Technical manual, 2005 )

 

Indoor air pollutants have been linked to a range of health problems such as:

  • Eye, nose, throat and skin irritations
  • Headaches, fatigue and dizziness.
  • Breathing difficulties, chest pain, coughing and flu like symptoms
  • Asthma and allergy (Stephenson, J, 2000)
  • Sudden infant death syndrome (Tong, Colditz, 2004)
  • Lung cancer and cardiorespiratory diseases (Kjellstrom et al, 2002)

 

Contributors to indoor air pollution

  • Insufficient ventilation
  • Toxic building materials such as MDF, varnishes, adhesives, vinyls, plastics, carpet, and new furnishings
  • Office equipment such as photocopiers and printers.
  • Fire retardants on electrical equipment and furnishings.
  • Personal care products and household cleaners
  • Pesticides
  • Pets and pests
  • Mould and moisture
  • Gas leaks and combustion by-products
  • Dusts and particulates.

EKO Building Biology Services

We conduct general indoor air quality assessments where we identify potential or existing air quality health concerns such as gas leaks, toxic building materials, toxic cleaning and personal care products, insufficient ventilation, heavy metals and specific industry toxins and health concerns.

Air Sampling

We use specialised equipment to take samples of

  • Dust
  • Gases
  • Volatile organic compounds
  • Biological hazards.

We then send your sample/s to a NATA (National Association of Testing Authorities) accredited.

References.

  • Brown, S, CSIRO, Beating the $12 Billion cost of polluted air, online available @ http://www.csiro.au/files/mediaRelease/mr1998/Beating12BillionCostpollutedAir.htm
  • Bijlsma, 2007, Australian College of Environmental Studies, Air Pollution