Has the Indoor and Built Environment Started Changing Modern Health?

Abstract

It is well established that people today are spending more time indoors than ever before [ I ] with some spending more than 80% of their lifetime indoors [2]. If this is combined with what is referred to as the built environment, then many of us may be living nearly 100% of our time in city and suburban areas. The indoor and built environment has become the most important part of our physical surroundings. This has lead to dramatic differences in exposure between indoor and outdoor air toxicants involving types of contaminants, concentration of pollutants, and their sources [2][3][4]. Although a key factor, pollutant exposure constitutes only one characteristic of the modern indoor environment. Other emerging factors that are just as important [5, 6] include life-style changes from inactivity and modem non-physical indoor activities such as watching television. With current trends of increased obesity, diabetes, asthma and other chronic diseases associated with westernised society, it would appear that a blending of these health concerns with pollutant exposure and the physical environment is occurring. These life-style type diseases appear, in part, to be a result of different working environments, together with changes in habits, activities and way of living. The interactions between changes of life-style, pollutant exposure combinations associated with the indoor and built environment and the physical characteristics of living environments have not been readily addressed as a combination, if even

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“…As I mentioned in a previous editorial [1], these are the main concerns of humanity and are related to the building environment. What all these issues relate to is the disappearance of the wild places of the world.…”

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