Comparison of evaluation systems and measurement methods for a healthy and pollutant-free construction

Abstract

It is nowadays recognized that the indoor pollution is much higher than the outdoor pollution (atmospheric pollution). This indoor pollution compromising the indoor air quality constitutes health risks for the building occupants, because we spend approximately 90% of our time indoors and we breathe 15 m3 of air every day. The indoor pollutants can be in chemical, physical or biological form and they originate from diverse sources. We focused in this work only on the chemical pollutants emitted by the construction materials before the occupancy of buildings. Construction materials emit volatile organic compounds (VOCs), whether natural or synthetic. The choice of low-emitting building materials is important to avoid releasing high concentrations of VOCs indoors which are a threat for the health comfort of building occupants.

We studied six new buildings constructed in Luxembourg between 2011 and 2018. The materials of the buildings have been chosen according to the DGNB criteria on building materials. These criteria favour only the implementation of low-emitting materials on the construction sites. The low emission feature of construction materials is indicated by different labels. The measurements for the indoor air quality control of the six buildings have showed that the measured formaldehyde and TVOC concentrations were below the healthy concentration limits.

Since the indoor air quality is a factor of sustainability, it is taken into account by the certification systems. Therefore, we made a comparison of a few certification organisms which are DGNB, BREEAM, LEED, Minergie-ECO and LENOZ. We just examined how the indoor air quality rubric is treated by these certification systems.