Concerns are now being expressed worldwide about the possible health effects of exposure to electromagnetic fields coming from such diverse sources as high voltage transmission lines, mobile telecommunication systems. Health effects such as cancer, changes in behavior, memory loss, sudden infant death syndrome and many others have been suggested as due to exposure to electromagnetic fields. The health effects of exposure to electromagnetic fields need to be properly assessed, but, insufficient research has been conducted to demonstrate these effects. There is an urgent need to provide consensus and clarification of these issues.

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The relationship between the indoor environment and the global environment is discussed in accordance with the interaction between comfort and energy use, and the concept of environmental ethics is presented. It is of concern that a great amount of energy is used to obtain comfort in the indoor environment, giving rise to degradation of global environment. To reach the target set at Kyoto protocol of COP3 in 1997, energy conservation and natural energy utilisation are strongly required, and comfort in the indoor environment should be attained with a minimum use of conventional energy. For example, smoking requires a large amount of ventilation, thus adversely affecting energy conservation. Instead of selfishly seeking comfort in a narrow sense seeking convenience and economics, comfort in a wide sense considering a possible nuisance to neighbours and offspring must be sought towards the concept of environmental ethics.

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Following our previous study, the skin blood flow rate and regional sweating rate of the human body were examined for four different arm and leg exercises in the supine and sitting postures. Both the experimental conditions and the subjects were similar to the previous study. Fifteen minutes of exercise were conducted at 30±1℃ air temperature, 50±10% relative humidity and 0.2m/sec air velocity. During and after the exercise, the metabolic rate (MR), skin blood flow rates (BFR) on the finger, toe, thigh and chest, regional sweating rates (Msw) on the forearm, thigh and back, and evaporation rates (ER) on 10 sites on the human body surface were measured. The results for physiological responses and the MR during each exercise condition were summarized as follows: (1) The increase in BER on the finger and thigh were larger for the leg exercise than for the arm exercise, whereas BFR on the chest was higher in the sitting posture than in the supine posture. (2) Msw on the upper trunk was suppressed in the supine posture. (3) ER and Msw on the upper trunk were suppressed in the supine posture. The results for both ER and Msw showed the pressure-sweating reflex of the human body in exercise. (4) This was considered that the suppression of sweating on the upper body caused the mean skin temperature to increase. It was the reason for the low correlation coefficient between the mean skin temperature and the MR in exercise obtained in the previous study.

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