Health Risk Factors for Housing Environment and Risk Management

Abstract

After the 1990s, many effective measures were taken to improve indoor air pollution in Japan. However, as a result of major changes in building materials, consumer products, and lifestyle, and new scientific findings on health effects associated with indoor environmental pollution, new issues have been indicated, such as chemical pollutants in indoor dusts or indoor pollutants caused by new chemicals that were substituted from chemicals that Indoor Air Quality Guideline was set. On the other hand, scientific evidence for the links between housing environment and health has accumulated substantially in recent decades. Therefore, the World Health Organization (WHO) is developing Housing and Health Guidelines to provide policymakers with recommendations on healthy housing conditions such as thermal comfort, indoor air pollution, crowding, and home injuries. In this paper, the basic principles of healthy housing, the current status of Japanese dwellings, and the recent approaches of WHO are summarized.