The Canadian Committee on Indoor Air Quality and Buildings (CCIAQB) has recently undergone a re-branding exercise. The main focus under our original committee name and IAQForum.ca domain name was on workplace indoor air quality. We have been receiving a lot of feedback from people who are equally concerned about the air they are breathing in their homes. With that in mind, we have recently broadened our scope to include issues and solutions for homeowners, occupants and building managers. Our new committee name has been simplified to the Canadian Committee on Indoor Air Quality (CCIAQ). Our new domain name has also changed from IAQForum.ca to IAQResource.ca, to emphasize that we produce technical resources in the form of guides (called Modules) on various indoor air quality (IAQ) related topics. We will continue to produce and share unbiased, professionally sourced information about indoor air quality, and make it available free for download on our website. Our aim is to help you navigate through possible problems and we trust that the information will be helpful to you in solving those issues that may be affecting people whether at home, school or in the workplace. Our PDF format modules are free for your use, or can be sent to building managers or shared with others concerned with indoor air quality.
We spend as much as 90 percent of our time indoors, so it only makes sense that we want to make sure the air we are breathing is healthy. Yet many people, even those who may suffer from illness due to polluted indoor air, tend to think of outdoor air as being the major culprit.
There are many factors that can affect the quality of indoor air. These can range from chemicals in building materials, and consumer products like paint and cleaning products, mould, cooking fumes, as well as polluted air that may be entering from outside the building, or re-circulated from other parts of a building. Some of our more popular recent modules are about scent-free buildings (Module 6 – Scent-Free Buildings) and understanding chemical sensitivities (Module 13 – Addressing Chemical Sensitivities). Today more buildings are adopting scent-free policies, but, unfortunately, many people don’t take the issue seriously, nor understand what it means, or how it can cause serious health issues for occupants. These two documents should help you become more informed and discern the truth about these increasingly important issues.
All members of the CCIAQ, at IAQResource.ca, look forward to continuing to provide you with useful information on a wide variety of topics. We hope you will join us in learning and sharing this information so that we can all improve the IAQ in our homes and workplaces.