The Use of Odour in Setting Ventilation Rates

Historically, the perception of human odour (bioeffluent) has been used to set standards for ventilation rates in buildings. Over the last 10 years, one of the conclusions reached from this work is that odour production by building mate rials and its services may be as important as the contribution from the occu pants in influencing the perception of odour. Consequently, standard ventila tion rates may need to be increased almost 9-fold in order to dilute these addi tional sources of odour. The energy penalty of such a large increase in ventila tion is very high. This paper reviews the evidence that leads to the above con clusion.