Indoor Environmental Services history

ASHRAE recommended in 1895 as a minimum rate for ventilation 15 l/s per person.

Carrier designed his first system in 1902 to control temperature and humidity in a printing plant in Brooklyn (New York, USA). Unfortunately, this system did not work well and the design conditions couldn’t be maintained.

In January 1906, he obtained the patent called 'Apparatus for Treating Air’ . (The term 'air-conditioning' was first coined by the American textile engineer Stuart Cramer).

In 1923, ASHRAE Journal published the article 'Determination of the comfort zone' (Houghten & Yaglou) , in which the conditions for comfort were presented on a psychrometric diagram.

In 1936 ASHRAE recommended 7.5 l/s per person on the basis of work of C. Yaglou.

Founded in 1963, REHVA represents a network of more than 120.000 engineers from 26 European countries.

In 1970, he published his dissertation 'Thermal Comfort' in which he defined a new discipline: the study of the condition of comfort and well-being in indoor environments.

In 1973, ASHRAE published its first Standard 62 with the recommended amount of supplied air of 7.5 l/s per person.

From 1982, the World Health Organization (WHO) used the term Sick Building Syndrome (SBS) and this became the most commonly used term.

In the UK, significant attention to the issue of indoor air quality and its impact on health only began in earnest with the 1991 House of Commons Select Committee Enquiry on Indoor Pollution which acknowledged the importance of indoor air to the health and wellbeing of people at home and in offices.

In response to this, in 1993, the then Department of the Environment (now Defra) published a booklet entitled ‘Good Air Quality in Your Home!’ (DOE, 1993).

At that time a cross-departmental initiative resulted in the establishment of a significant UK research programme on indoor and outdoor air pollution and an annual meeting to review its progress; this started in 1997 and still continues today.

In this report WHO stated that, in 2000, indoor air pollution was responsible for more than 1.5 million deaths and 2.7% of the global burden of disease, mostly due to the use of solid fuels for cooking and heating.

The question of guideline values for indoor air pollutants has been addressed by a number of European countries, including especially Germany, Sweden and Norway; France is particularly active in this area having established its ‘Indoor Air Quality Observatory’ in 2001.

In 2003, responding to the renewed domestic interest in indoor air quality, the UK Indoor Environments Group was established with the specific aim of co-ordinating and providing a focus for UK activity concerned with improving indoor environments for people.

WHO also made a very important contribution to the understanding of the global health relevance of IAQ when it published, in 2007, its report ‘Indoor air pollution: national burden of disease estimates’.

B. Roberts, “ALFRED WOLFF AIR CONDITIONING PIONEER,” 2014. [Online]. Available: http://www.hevac-heritage.org/built_environment/pioneers_revisited/wolff.pdf.