BEST SUSTAINABLE INDOOR AIR QUALITY PRACTICES IN COMMERCIAL BUILDINGS

Abstract. This paper describes commercial building indoor air quality practices and then discusses them in the context of total building environmental performance. “Green buildings” generally have included some effort to address indoor air quality issues along with an unspecified number of other environmental concerns. Rarely, if ever, is analysis conducted to evaluate trade-offs made among environmental features considered important in “green” buildings even though conflicts occur among design features intended to improve a building’s environmental performance. One “green building ” feature may reduce certain environmental impacts while increasing others. A method is needed to examine the total environmental impact of designs. In order to identify best sustainable indoor air quality practices in commercial buildings, a newly-developed, comprehensive approach to building ecology is presented. This approach, tentatively titled the Systematic Evaluation and Assessment of Building Environmental Performance (SEABEP), uses sustainability criteria as the basis for comprehensive evaluation of the environmental performance of design features