Perceived air quality and sensory pollution loads in six Danish office buildings

Perceived air quality and sensory pollution loads were measured in 6 office buildings with mechanical ventilation without recirculation, in each buildings in 6 representative non-smoking medium-sized and small offices with mixing ventilation. An untrained panel of 43 subjects assessed the air quality on a normal weekday when the building was occupied, and on a weekend without occupants in the building.

On both occasions the ventilation system was in operation as on a normal working day. Outdoor air supply rate, air temperature, relative humidity, concentration of carbon dioxide and ultrafine particles were measured. The percentage of persons dissatisfied with air quality ranged from 3 to 30%, decreasing with increasing outdoor air supply rate from 1 to 4 L/(sxm2floor).

Total sensory pollution loads ranged from 0.08 to 0.37 olf/m2floor in occupied buildings and from 0.04 to 0.27 olf/m2floor in unoccupied buildings. They are somewhat lower than the loads measured in earlier studies.