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
[questions:indoor-air-quality]
Activities
[activities:indoor-air-quality]
Research notes
[notes:indoor-air-quality!question:indoor-air-quality]
Wikis
All wiki pages relating to air quality:
[wikis:indoor-air-quality]
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