Plenary Lecture

Indoor Air Quality

Professor Costas G. Helmis
Department of Environmental Physics and Meteorology, Faculty of Physics,
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
Building PHYS-5, University Campus, 157 84 Athens, Greece
Email: chelmis@phys.uoa.gr

Abstract: During the last two decades there has been an increasing concern on the effects of indoor air quality on health, as people spend approximately 90 percent of their time indoors (in homes, offices, public buildings, shopping malls, restaurants, vehicles etc.). Furthermore, the closure of natural openings of buildings for energy saving purposes, the use of untested new materials as well as the poor air exchange affect drastically the indoor air quality. Recently the scientific community is increasingly interested in indoor areas of hospitals, clinics, athletic halls and large public areas in urban areas where the mixture of pollutants, the relevant emissions as well as the additional outdoor pollution sources can affect the indoor air quality status. The indoor exposure of humans depends on a number of parameters such as the indoor sources and sinks, the outdoor concentrations, the ventilation rate and the specific characteristics of the indoor environment (surface to volume ratio, etc.).
In this invited talk a review regarding the quantitatively examination, theoretically and experimentally, of the relative contribution of the main mechanisms that control indoor air quality, will be given. Thus results from experiments conducted in apartments and offices in Greece, in the frame of the ‘Urban Aerosol’ project that aimed at the characterization of air pollutants both indoors and outdoors, the estimation of the controlling parameters of transport and deposition mechanisms and the characteristic indoor air quality parameters, using analytical and numerical methods, will be presented. Results regarding the evolution of pollutants’ concentrations produced from smoking in a controlled indoor environment in the centre of Athens, Greece are also given. Furthermore, an experimental study of indoor air quality in selected rooms of the Athens Traffic Control Tower (ATCT) buildings in Hellinicon (old) and Spata (new) international airport, which are characterized by different ventilation systems, will be presented. The analysis of the measurements in two large athletic halls with different type of ventilation, which showed that air quality in both athletic halls was significantly influenced from outdoor pollution levels and that pollution stratification was evident indoors, especially during events, will be given also. Finally the assessment of the indoor air quality status of three different clinics of the Athens University School of Dentistry, in order to identify possible sources and associate specific dental activities with pollution levels, will be presented. The application of a CFD model to investigate the airflow and temperature fields prevailing in the clinics and the dispersion of gaseous pollutants and in addition, the numerical simulations with the arithmetical MIAQ model that were performed in order to estimate the relative contribution of the indoor sources of particulate matter to the indoor air quality, will be given also.

Brief Biography of the Speaker:
Studies First Degree: BSc, University of Athens, Faculty of Physics, 1972
Post Graduate Titles: MSc in Electronics, University of Athens, 1975
MSc in Automation, University of Athens, 1976
PhD in Physics, University of Athens, 1981

Academic Positions:
Head of the Dept. of Applied Physics, Faculty of Physics, University of Athens.
Assoc. Professor, Dept. of Applied Physics, Faculty of Physics, University of Athens.

Fields of Scientific activities:
- Atmospheric Physics
- Development of instrumentation for remote and in-situ measurements
- Air Pollution meteorology
- Indoor and Outdoor Air Pollution
He has 92 publications in journals, 167 announcements in conference proceeding, 86 participations in technical reports and 20 other publications. He has participated in the EEA on air quality (ETC/AQ) during 1996-2001 and in 89 research projects, in 37 of the above he acted as the Principal Investigator.