37º IAHS World Congress on Housing: - Universidad de Cantabria

XXXVII <strong>IAHS</strong><strong>World</strong> <strong>Congress</strong> on HousingOctober 26 – 29, 2010, Santander, SpainCODE: 414MATERIAL EMISSIONS OF BUILDINGS INTERIORIngrid Šenitková, Tomáš TomčíkDepartment of Indoor Engineering and Building ServicesTechnical University of Košice, Slovakiae-mail: tomas.tomcik@tuke.skKey words: Indoor quality, interior design, materials, TVOCsAbstractIndoor environment especially concerning to interior architecture affect us not only by theirmass, surfaces, color and shapes. Indoor surfaces mostly emit the compounds which havegreat impact on human beings. Growing attention is being paid to indoor air quality as one ofthe main health and well-being factors, also in Slovakia. The Building and EnvironmentalEngineering Institute is concerned to indoor sciences research work within indoorenvironmental engineering orientation of the structural architecture. Today, the buildings aredivided into: very low-polluting, low polluting and not low polluting. The classification ofbuildings is affected by the approach in selecting low emitting materials and restrictingactivities that emit pollutants into the environment of buildings. Therefore, the interiormaterial surfaces selection is important from volatile organic compounds (VOCs) occurrencepoint of view. The main subject of the last period interest is and the materials emissions.Several office interior surfaces emissions are compared in this study. Comparing performedby chemical analysis and sensory tests using the test chamber. Methodology of materialcomparison is based on the volume of total volatile organic compounds (TVOCs) in the air. Ithas become evident that building materials are the major source of indoor volatile organiccompounds. The indoor air acceptability and indoor air quality concerning to several types ofinterior materials are presented in this case study. The impact of individual materials and theirinteraction effects to the indoor air quality will be discussed within the paper.37º <strong>IAHS</strong> <strong>World</strong> <strong>Congress</strong> On Housing Science 204