HEALTHY INDOOR ENVIRONMENTS: HOW TO ASSESS HEALTH PERFORMANCES OF CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS Extended abstract

The indoor environments, designed as integrated systems of physical and anthropogenic factors, have a significant impact on the health of communities and are currently one of the major environmental risk factors for humans. The health risk due to a low indoor air quality was strongly acknowledged in the last century when numerous health and hygiene laws have been adopted in order to ensure a higher level of indoor safety and comfort. In recent years, however, (in developed countries) there is a radical evolution of hygiene and well-being needs related to building systems in which individuals live and work, but at the same time laws and regulations have not been upgraded for meeting the emerging needs. The key factors that affect the state of health of individuals and, more generally, of a population are now numerous, interrelated and sometimes conflicting with each other. In the construction field, for example, the energy efficiency is considered a more and more important requirement for the sustainability, but it causes low permeability to air and reduced spontaneous flow of natural ventilation, thus increasing the concentrations of pollutants within the environment (Capolongo et al., 2001). The current welfare needs nowadays more than ever require architectural, technological and engineering solutions, with the aim of protecting the health and actively participating in prevention by parameters no longer associated with perceived wellbeing as temperature and humidity, lighting, sunshine, humidity control, water supply, waste removal and air quality. However this awareness has not been received into regulations for addressing and controlling the design practice, that have not been updated mostly from the 70s and 80s, with the result that the references contained therein are not anymore comprehensive (Buffoli et al., 2007). In recent years, the World Health Organization has focused its policies and directives towards strategies aimed at enhancing indoor and outdoor conditions that promote the well-being and protect health in its broader definition (“complete physical, mental and social health and not just the absence of disease”). It is therefore confirmed that health is the result of different socio-economic, cultural and environmental issues directly or indirectly related to the specific characteristics of the environments in which we live. The importance of considering all aspects that contribute to the indoor well-being as driving forces for the human health is also emphasized by the fact that, on average, everyone spend more than 90% of their time in confined environments (home, place work, meeting places, public transport). According to this strong relationship between built environment and health every government should adopt more significant strategies for the achievement of well-being in this context. In Italy the local health authorities (ASL) are required to verify the compliance of construction projects with health and hygiene regulations. This assessment mainly consists in a mere verification accompanied by opinions often considered as subjective. This context highlights the importance of defining an instrument in order to objectively evaluate the quality of indoor spaces in terms of health, comfort and prevention and to effectively address designers towards high performance buildings. This instrument called Multicriteria Evaluation Tool for Health (METH) was defined in a