A Comparative Study Of Discomfort Caused By Indoor Air Pollution, Thermal Load And Noisec

Abstract

The relative importance of sensory air pollution, thermal load and noise was studied under controlled conditions in two identical environmental chambers. In one chamber subjects were exposed to various levels of either thermal load or poor indoor air quality. For each condition tested in this chamber, the subjects were exposed to a number of noise levels in an adjacent chamber with neutral thermal conditions and good indoor air quality in order to determine a noise level causing the same degree of discomfort. A total of 68 comparisons of the conditions in the two chambers were made by the same group of 16 subjects after one‐minute exposure in each chamber. In the operative temperature range of 23–29°C, a 1°C change in operative temperature was found to have the same effect on human comfort as a change in perceived air quality of 2.4 decipol or a change in noise level of 3.9 dB. For levels of perceived air quality up to 10 decipol, a 1 ‐decipol change in perceived air quality had the same effect on human comfort as a change in noise level of 1.2 dB. A relationship between traffic noise level and percentage dissatisfied was established

Urban daily life routines and human exposure to environmental discomfort

“…Since the 1970s, several scholars have worked toward a systematic description of spatial lifestyles (Hagerstrand 1975;Buttimer 1980;Pred 1989;Schnell and Benjamini 2001;Schnell 2004). In particular, it has become clear that there is a fundamental relationship between daily life practices and associated movement, which influences the shape of human identity (Lefevre 1971;De-Certeau 1982;Giddens 1991;Soja 1996). Nevertheless, to date, the monitoring of urban environments has not taken into account the dynamism of urban daily life.…”

A chamber-experiment investigation of the interaction between perceptions of noise and odor in humans

“…Some researches have focused on multiple factors and their interactions in experiments. For example, Clausen et al (1993) found that in the range of 23-29°C, a 1°C temperature change had the same effects on human comfort as a change in noise level of 3.9 dB. An increase of temperature and humidity was found to affect strongly the perception of IAQ (Fang et al 1998).…”

A Procedure to Evaluate the Indoor Global Quality by a Sub Objective-Objective Procedure

“…The first procedure is a multiple regression method that allows to identify the variable that has more weight in the predict the level of general comfort, and the variables whose contribution is statistically significant and not simply related to random factors. This procedure estimates a linear model expressed by (1) where err = 0.47 and b0, b1, b2 and b3 are the model parameters and err is the residual component of the model. To evaluate these parameters we have minimised the expression (2) where N is the sample dimension and yi, X1i, X2i and X3i are the values of the i-th observation as regards the output and input variables (votes).…”