Healthy Indoors Magazine - USA Edition

Healthy Indoors | 35 we were divided into groups of eight to "design" an ideal indoor environment. Nothing was mentioned about people and their experience until toward the end. But once the topic was suggested there was an immediate refocus of attention and inter- est in exploring ideas. This is not a concrete sign and is far from a sea-change, but it is a reaction I haven't seen in the last six or so years of this organization. A similar experience, with a twist, also occurred last month at the North Amer- ican Chapter of the International Soci- ety of Environmental Epidemiology (ISEE NAC) in Corvallis, Oregon. Despite people spending 90 percent of their time inside the indoor environment, ISEE didn't have an in- door environment track until five years ago. There were 22 presentations but only two even mentioned the word "indoor." A bril- liant symposium on the microbiome was conducted on the outdoor environment. When asked if the outdoor microbiome mittee updated their Guideline 10, Interac- tions Affecting the Achievement of Acceptable Indoor Environments. For the first time it included "health" in the definitions section of the document. It referenced the 1948 Work Health Organization definition ex- panded to include building and occupant interactions. Further updates are under way to include occupant behavior in build- ings from the point of view of sociology, psychology, and culture. The International Society of Indoor Air Quality and Climate (ISIAQ) held its Euro- pean region Healthy Buildings 2023 con- ference recently in Aachen, Germany. Most notable was the number of presentations that went beyond engineering research of the properties of the building itself to in- clude the indoor environment. I participat- ed in one workshop that the conference recognized as "best of conference." After short presentations to orient the audience to healthy indoor environments, could affect people indoors, the immediate response was a blank look from all three presenters, followed by a short private conversation. Then one of them responded, "That's interesting, perhaps in the future." This year, the interest was more direct. In addition to the keynote, there was a post- er showing how people tend to consider outdoor exposures as greater risk than indoor exposures. There were two tracks where multiple presentations included the indoor environment and specific effects on occupants. I framed my presentation as information "from the other side" of the epidemiolog- ical context. Field practitioners can be di- rectly involved with the occupants and with how they experience the conditions that epidemiologists study. Field practitioners need their work, and perhaps some of field information would be of benefit to epi- demiologists. I concluded with a challenge: Rather than drastically shift environmental

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