Indoor Air in Healing Environments: definition of a monitoring activity in inpatient wards for design and management strategies in healthcare facilities.

Introduction. Several countries are carried out air quality monitoring in professional work-places of hard areas of hospitals. Currently the main investigations are about biological and physical risks, otherwise chemical ones are less investigated. Therefore it determinated the definition and adoption of specific legislation, guidelines and values, although Italian context lacks of specific norms. Methodology. A research group has launched an investigation of air quality in inpatient rooms. The analysis examines VOCs, and the relative influence of micro-climatic parameters, ventilation and concentration of pollutants’ parameters. Discussion. The paper reports the results of some hospitals obtained from the indoor air monitoring. Each survey, done every month, considers all the activities, users and processes that influence the in-door air. Conclusion. The analysis is work in progress on several inpatient rooms for control-ling the indoor air values during the year. Those data become useful for the definition of de-sign guidelines for healthy inpatient wards.