Abstract
The impact of indoor air quality on the well-being and comfort of a building’s occupants are key to creating an indoor environment which increases human performance. To date, efforts to improve indoor air quality have focused on creating thermal comfort and on developingtechnical means of reducing odor pollution. However, it has not yet been possible to translate these efforts into a corresponding improvement in the “dissatisfaction level” expressed by building occupants. Conventional approaches are bound to remain incomplete because they fail to take account of physiological and psychological effects of the sense of smell. Acceptable indoor air quality can only be achieved if the reduction in air pollution is combined with the addition of natural olfactory stimulants with suf cient positive attributes. Indoor air will only be perceived as acceptable if olfactory criteria are taken into consideration in addition to the traditional criteria of thermal comfort. Furthermore, it is necessary to set high standards for the use of the olfactory stimulants which are addedto the indoor air. There are a number of speci c requirements for the selection and dispersion of these substances.
