No Impacts on Users’ Health: How Indoor Air Quality Assessments Can Promote Health and Prevent Disease

Despite being an active topic of discussion since the 1980s, Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) remains an emerging public health topic, with increasing recognition of dangerous health consequences for individuals in confined spaces affected by poor IAQ. IAQ is defined within the broader Scientific Community as the sum of the outdoor air quality and the contaminants emitted from internal sources affecting indoor environments. Because of these dual influences on IAQ, monitoring activities of IAQ should consider the indoor air, the outdoor air, and the interaction between them. Although there are several trends that emphasize actions such as “zero pollution” in outdoor and confined spaces, the main scope of the IAQ assessments should guarantee zero impacts on users’ health. The aim of the chapter is to highlight the user-centrality and to argue how users can live in healthy spaces and the best practices for guaranteeing adequate performances of the indoor spaces, as well as the key role of indoor air assessments and how the user can understand the risks. For this reason, the authors involved in the contribution have multidisciplinary backgrounds referring to air quality in confined spaces, public health, how living and working spaces can influence health status, and building hygiene.