This study conducted a serious of indoor air quality investigations in two different types of buildings in Taiwan, office and school building. Data of environmental assessment showed that both types of buildings had inadequate air change rate and indoor microbial levels higher than recommendation level. Remedial strategies were then proposed, taking into account the existing design and designated function of each environment. A follow-up evaluation demonstrated that increasing air change rate could reduce microbial levels in both office buildings and school classrooms, while the air change rates were still below the minimum requirement recommended by the in Taiwan’s building code. Nonetheless, this investigation identified that improving indoor air quality by proper management of the ventilation system could be achieved without expensive re-construction. Our study has also highlighted that sick building syndromes, based on serial questionnaire surveys in Taiwan, were highly associated with microbial contamination in office buildings. This findings support the potential impact of health effects related to and medical costs resulted from airborne microbial contamination in Taiwan, and the importance of controlling for such an exposure. Cost of medical care in the diseases such as allergic respiratory diseases, tuberculosis, and acute respiratory infection were estimated according to the Nation Health Insurance database. The preliminary estimations have shown that improving indoor air quality could save about 3.7 to 4 billion NT dollars in medical care expense. This estimation might still be well underestimated for not having considered other social costs, loss of working hours and reduction in production.

Indoor air quality,sick building syndrome,medical cost,microbes,control strategy