Indoor Environmental Quality and Climate Change
Indoor environmental quality and climate change are closely linked issues. It is therefore essential that these issues be considered together to ensure that the climate change mitigation and adaptation measures implemented do not compromise indoor environmental quality.
How can climate change affect indoor environments?
Climate change is likely to influence indoor environments through:
changes in the outdoor environment due to climate shifts: rising temperatures that can affect thermal comfort, increased precipitation in both quantity and frequency that can impact the proliferation of microorganisms—particularly mold—greater soil dryness, and changes in outdoor air pollutant concentrations that may alter those in indoor environments...;
an impact on buildings or on people’s behaviors in indoor environments: the use of new building materials that alter infiltration and absorption patterns, energy-efficient renovations that change air permeability and circulation, the use of air conditioning…;
What are the health challenges in the context of adapting to climate change?
In the current context of the climate and economic crisis, a number of measures linked to public policies have been implemented in recent years to promote the thermal renovation of buildings.
The building sector accounts for nearly 40% of France’s annual energy consumption and generates more than a quarter of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions.
Thermal retrofitting of buildings, which improves the airtightness of the building envelope, can affect indoor air quality. Indeed, if air exchange is not sufficiently effective, this can lead to a deterioration in indoor air quality due to increased confinement (humidity issues, accumulation of pollutants, etc.). These factors must therefore be taken into account during and after construction to avoid compromising occupants’ comfort and health.
More broadly, measures implemented to combat climate change must be carefully considered, taking into account the potential impacts on various factors of indoor environments (pollution, noise, heat, etc.) to avoid degrading the quality of these environments.
Only a comprehensive, cross-cutting, and intersectoral approach to all these issues will enable the development of appropriate solutions and thus ensure indoor environments that are conducive to health.
