Development of life cycle impact assessment methods for the health damege by indoor air pollution: Study on health damage causes by indoor air pollution

There are so many chemical substances around us today. On the other hand, new houses are significantly air tight by standards of energy saving policy and it is very difficult to exchange between indoor air and fresh outdoor air. As a result, indoor air quality becomes worse, and health concerns have been an increasing social problem. The studies for these problems have been developed in the several fields, such as Building Environmental Engineering, Medical Science and in other areas so on. However, to solve this problem fundamentally, the comprehensive and quantitative assessments from the generation of chemical substances to onset of symptoms are needed. In this study, the health damages by indoor air pollutants are evaluated comprehensively following the environmental assessment tool, LIME (Life-cycle Impact assessment Method based on Endpoint modeling) developed by Advanced Industrial Science and Technology. Theoretically it is very difficult to evaluate sick-building syndromes, because these symptoms are extremely variable from person to person, and there has been no research in the world in these areas. Therefore, the data offered by a special hospital for sick-building syndromes are used with medical specialists in this study. A new assessment tools for indoor air pollutants is developed for the first time.