Characterizing Indoor Air Quality Performance Using a Graphical Approach

We describe and demonstrate a graphical approach that can be used to illustrate the performance of buildings with respect to indoor air quality (IAQ). In the absence of an adequate or agreed-upon IAQ metric(s), we describe a graphical approach to presenting IAQ performance. This approach displays measured or predicted levels of indoor pollutants relative to health-based guidelines or other appropriate reference values. The development of this graphical approach leads to several challenging questions regarding how to characterize building IAQ performance, including the determination of relevant contaminant concentration limits and the impacts of contaminant mixtures. This paper discusses those questions with the intent of promoting future dialog on how to characterize IAQ performance using this graphical or any other approach. Lastly, we briefly describe how the approach can be extended to illustrate the performance of buildings with respect to IAQ and other building parameters (e.g., energy and water consumption).