Andrew Persily: Indoor Air Quality

Part 1: IAQ Criteria for Building Products

Part 2: How To Measure IAQ Parameters

Part 3: Air Purification Technologies and Reduced Ventilation

Part 4: Finding the Sources of Contaminants

Finding the Sources of Contaminants

August 2011 - IAQ

What are the tools to help locate the source of IAQ contamination?

Sometimes it's pretty mysterious and takes a lot of thinking, digging and asking to figure out what's going on. It can sometimes take some clever detective work to figure it out. In addition to using their eyes and experience, different people have their own bags of tricks, but there's no magic solution. Some helpful questions include, "What's the problem? When does it occur? Where does it occur? What is the complaint pattern?" Just thinking things through hopefully you can get to what the problem is. Again, the EPA Building Air Quality document mentioned in response to the first question contains some helpful guidance on this issue.