Influence of indoor environmental quality on human health and productivity - A review

Abstract The main goal of this article is to review the state-of-the-art literature and establish a connection between the factors that influence health and productivity in any given indoor environment, whether it be residential or commercial. The study reviews data from books, standards, international SCI journals, conference articles, and gray literature that focuses on the main factors of indoor environmental quality. Indoor environmental quality is broadly separated in the up to eight main factors. However, the emphasis will be given only to the factors that can be measured and controlled actively: thermal comfort, indoor air quality and ventilation, visual comfort and acoustic comfort. Further, the article discusses minimum requirements for implementation of indoor environmental quality evaluation and its relation with green guides and an emerging low-cost sensor array. The article aims to provide a comprehensive view of challenges being faced daily by researchers and the research currently being done on the forefront of indoor environmental quality. Thus, future researches can gain a concise overview of this field of studies and a base to build their future research upon.