Indoor Air Quality
Much of our lives is spent indoors where we live, work, and play. What is in the air we breathe indoors affects our health and quality of life. Some common pollutants that could be present in indoor air include carbon monoxide, radon, mold, asbestos, formaldehyde, and other volatile organic compounds (VOCs).
A number of projects on Public Lab have explored indoor air quality, monitoring and remediation. Check out the materials below, follow the tag indoor-air-quality and add your materials to this topic.
Questions
Activities
Purpose | Category | Status | Author | Time | Difficulty | Replications |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Snake Plant Air Remediation Build & Partial Teardown | - | - | @jfrankamp | - | - | 0 replications: Try it » |
Building Snake Plant Air Remediation kit in Bangalore, India | build | in-progress | @deeptalaxmibharadwaj | 3h | easy | 0 replications: Try it » |
A kit to design your own formaldehyde experiment? | - | - | @warren | - | - | 0 replications: Try it » |
Building a plant-based air purifier kit at Barnraising | - | - | @warren | - | - | 0 replications: Try it » |
How to Monitor Indoor TVOC with Raspberry PI | - | - | @Makepcb | - | - | 0 replications: Try it » |
Activities should include a materials list, costs and a step-by-step guide to construction with photos. Learn what makes a good activity here.
Research notes
Wikis
All wiki pages relating to air quality:
Title | Updated | Version | Views | Likes | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Indoor Air Quality | over 4 years ago by bhamster | 8 | 555 | 0 | |
Air Quality Class | over 5 years ago by warren | 60 | 719 | 3 | |
SmART-Form | almost 7 years ago by gretchengehrke | 14 | 765 | 4 | |
Formaldehyde | about 7 years ago by gretchengehrke | 5 | 674 | 1 | |
BioBroth Bubbler | over 7 years ago by warren | 3 | 965 | 0 | |
Massachusetts Indoor Air | about 8 years ago by gretchengehrke | 1 | 446 | 0 | |
Oklahoma Indoor Air | about 8 years ago by gretchengehrke | 2 | 264 | 0 | |
Vermont Indoor Air | about 8 years ago by gretchengehrke | 7 | 545 | 1 | |
Formaldehyde Exposure | over 8 years ago by nshapiro | 42 | 1,962 | 5 | |
Formaldehyde Test Kit | about 9 years ago by mathew | 23 | 4,701 | 9 | |
Indoor Air Quality Monitoring & Mitigation | over 9 years ago by liz | 48 | 2,550 | 12 | |
WhereWeBreathe | over 9 years ago by liz | 24 | 905 | 6 | |
Roomba Air Quality Monitoring | over 9 years ago by Shannon | 2 | 613 | 1 |
Regulations on indoor air quality
Federal regulations
Many of us spend a large portion of our time indoors, and yet indoor air quality remains largely unregulated at the federal level in the US [1]. For office buildings and other workplaces, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration sets rules on ventilation and some air pollutants [2], but there are no federal regulatory standards on indoor air quality for these spaces. In addition, the air we breathe inside our schools [3], homes, and apartment buildings also lacks federal air quality standards, leaving individual states to set their own rules.
Sources:
1. https://www.epa.gov/regulatory-information-topic/regulatory-information-topic-air#indoorair
2. https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/indoorairquality/
3. https://www.epa.gov/iaq-schools/are-schools-required-follow-epas-iaq-tools-schools-guidance
Local, tribal, or state regulations
The Environmental Law Institute maintains a searchable database of indoor air quality laws in individual US states here:
https://www.eli.org/buildings/database-state-indoor-air-quality-laws
The US Environmental Protection Agency provides links to state, tribal, and regional indoor air quality programs here:
https://www.epa.gov/indoor-air-quality-iaq/epa-regional-office-and-state-indoor-air-quality-information