Health and well-being in indoor work environments: a review of literature

During the design and realization processes of an indoor work environment there is the need to guarantee to the future occupants adequate health and wellbeing conditions. Both conditions are strictly related to the human perception of the environment, and depends on four basic factors: thermal environment, lighting, acoustics, and indoor air quality. Such factors are related both to the Occupational Health and Safety and to the Indoor Environmental Quality that represent complementary aspects, but they are characterized by two different approaches. The human exposure to the hazardous conditions is governed by national and international Directives where the limit values for each agent are indicated. The exposure to hazardous agents is tackled according to pass/fail criteria. However, the fulfilment of these limits ensures safe working conditions but not the achievement of comfort conditions. The perception of comfort is a long studied by the scientific community that has analysed the relation between the perception of comfort and the environmental conditions. In this case the approach is qualitative with the use of indices of performance. In this paper the complexity of the relationship between occupant comfort and well-being is discussed. The Author explore the existing literature on the risk for human health and on the Indoor Environmental Quality in order to create a framework of the state of art of these two different but strictly connected aspects.