• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.32 no.4 s.91
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• pp.275-281
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• 2006

Indoor air quality is the dominant contributor to total personal exposure because most people spend a majority of their time indoors. Especially exposure to indoor air can potentially pose a greater threat than exposure to ambient air when indoor environments have sources of contaminants. In this study, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and formaldehyde (HCHO) within newly constructed apartment have been determined in 27 houses of apartment in Seoul from December 2004 to March 2005. The measured indoor air pollutants were HCHO, volatile organic compounds including benzene, toluene, styrene, xylene, ethylbenzene and sampled on the standard method of Ministry of Environment in Korea. The indoor levels for benzene, xylene, toluene, ethylbenzene, styrene, and HCHO have significant increase trend after 5 hours closing of windows and doors. Levels of measured air pollutants concentrations between living rooms and bedrooms have not shown significant difference. Spearman correlation coefficient among the measured air pollutants ranged from 0.303 to 0.946, indicating similar source in building materials.

• Journal of the Korean Solar Energy Society
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.63-74
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• 2007

Together with the concern about the indoor all quality as sick house syndrome, the Ministry of Environment announced "Indoor Air Quality Control Law for the Multi Purpose Facility," which made the interests to be focused in the urgent understanding of current condition and preparation of measures about the indoor air pollution. In Dec 2005, the law was revised to obligatorily notify the amount of Formaldehyde and Volatile Organic Compounds in the case of newly constructed apartments with more than 100 houses. School also have its own indoor air quality guideline, Indoor air quality in school is very important because, children who very weak to indoor pollutants reside long time in there. The purpose of this paper is to survey indoor air qualify in school by field measurement. Field measurements were performed in 11 schools which were selected from 3 major cities(Incheon, Dae-jeon, chuncheon) in korea, during July, 2004. Totally concentration of Indoor pollutants were determined in 27 classroom. Target air pollutants were TVOC, formaldehyde, dust, CO, CO2 and NO2. For the result of this investigation, Indoor air quality in classroom was very poor and it was found that some pollutants (TVOC, float bacteria) exceed the guideline.

• Proceedings of the SAREK Conference
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• 2006.06a
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• pp.993-998
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• 2006

High-rise apartments have a problem using natural ventilation because of the strong outdoor wind velocity. Conventional high-rise apartments have adopted mechanical ventilation systems to maintain the indoor air quality. However, it leads to the overuse of electricity and the sick house syndrome. Double-skin facade is the alternative for the high-rise building to use natural ventilation and this study is focused on the performance of the box-window, which is a kind of double-skin facades. Indoor wind velocity and HCHO concentrations are analyzed with three types of box-windows: the diagonal type, parallel type and perpendicular type. The airflow is simulated by computational fluid dynamics program. Box-windows reduce the maximum value of indoor wind velocity about 50% compared with the single window and the HCHO concentrations do not have the big difference. Box-windows could be the alternative to enhance the use of the natural ventilation and indoor air quality of the high-rise apartment.

• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.191-204
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• 2005

Building and furnishing materials and consumer product are important sources of volatile organic compounds(VOCs) and other aldehydes in the indoor environment. Some available evidence indicates that VOCs can cause adverse health effects to the building occupants and contribute to some of the symptoms of what we call, 'Sick House Syndrome' in Korea. The aims of this study were to evaluate the efficiency of emission system and to investigate comparison of the emission characteristics of different building materials such as wall-papers, paints, and adhesives. The emission of VOCs from building materials were determined in the small chambers defining the temperature, relative humidity, and ventilation rate in this study. VOCs were sampled for 20 minutes using Tenax-TA tubes and analysed by GC-MS with thermal desorption. The stability of conditions for temperature and relative humidity in this small chamber system showed that the fluctuation of temperature was between 25.4$\pm$0.3$^{\circ}C$ and that of relative humidity was 50.2$\pm$0.6$\%$ under the airflow rate of 167 mL/min. The emission tests from building materials resulted in TVOC emission rates of 0.011 $\~$ 3.108 mg/m$^{2}$h after 7 days. The general wall-papers emitted toluene abundantly and the natural wall-papers mainly emitted n-butanol and a minor amount of alkanes compound such as n -tetradecane. The remainder consisted of toluene, m,p -xylene, and styrene. The paints mainly emitted toluene and the adhesives mainly emitted chloroform as well as toluene. As a result, this study is expected to suggest meaningful data for future studies in exposure control through selecting healthy building materials and for the establishment of guidelines for various building materials in Korea.

• Proceedings of the Korean Environmental Health Society Conference
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• 2005.06a
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• pp.341-344
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• 2005

The expression of the glutathione S-transferase (GST), whose induction accounts for antioxidant defense system, is regulated by activation of CCAAT/enhancer binding protein ${\beta}$ ($C/EBP{\beta}$), Sick house syndrome (SHS) presents healthy damage owing to the indoor environment of a building. Toluene has been implicated in one of the important causes of SHS. The present study investigated the effects of toluene treatment on the induction of GSTA2 gene and its mechanism. H411E cells treated with toluene, and GSTA2 expression was determined by immunoblot analysis. The translocation of $C/EBP{\beta}$ was assessed by immunocytochemical assays. $C/EBP{\beta}$ DNA binding activity was determined by electrophoretic mobility shift assays. The role of the C/EBP binding site in the induction of the GSTA2 gene was assessed by luciferase reporter-gene activity. Toluene induced GSTA2 protein expression. In toluene-treated cells, $C/EBP{\beta}$ translocated to the nucleus and bound to the consensus sequence of C/EBP (TTGCGCAA). Toluene treatment increased luciferase reporter-gene activity in cells transfected with the C/EBP-containing regulatory region of the GSTA2 gene. Oxidative stress is believed to play an important role in the induction of GSTA2 gene by toluene This study shows that toluene-induced GSTA2 gene expression is dependent upon nuclear translocation and binding of $C/EBP{\beta}$ to the C/EBP response element in the GSTA2 gene promoter.

• Journal of the Korean Wood Science and Technology
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• v.35 no.6
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• pp.100-107
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• 2007

People have spent lots of time inside building about 90% of these day. Industry has been developed rapidly after I960. Construction materials had changed from natural materials to chemical materials and confidentiality of building has been more higher than before by policy of saving energy. These have caused sick-building syndrome (SBS) for us. So people want environmental construction materials for their house. We designed a environmental loess (yellow soil) finishing material which was composed of loess, water, water-soluble resin, hardener and filler. The purposes of this study were that making an environmental loess finishing material with optimum ratio, evaluating the usability of loess finishing material for wall. Furthermore it was suitable for wall to evaluate mechanical properties that are impact test, cracking test, abrasion test and de-bonding test, environmental properties that were emission of VOCs, formaldehyde and far infrared radiation.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.63-73
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• 2017

In contemporary society, it is increasingly common to spend more time indoors. As such, there is a continually growing desire to build comfortable and safe indoor environments. Along with this trend, however, there are some serious indoor-environment challenges, such as the quality of indoor air and Sick House Syndrome. To address these concerns the government implements various systems to supervise and manage indoor environments. For example, green building certification is now compulsory for public buildings. There are three categories of green building certification related to indoor air in Korea: Health-Friendly Housing Construction Standards, Green Standard for Energy & Environmental Design(G-SEED), and Indoor Air Certification. The first two types of certification, Health-Friendly Housing Construction Standards and G-SEED, evaluate data in a drawing plan. In comparison, the Indoor Air Certification evaluates measured data. The certification using data from a drawing requires a considerable amount of time compared to other work. A 2D tool needs to be employed to measure the area manually. Thus, this study proposes an automatic assessment process using a Building Information Modeling(BIM) model based on 3D data. This process, using open source Industry Foundation Classes(IFC), exports data for the certification system, and extracts the data to create an Excel sheet for the certification. This is expected to improve the work process and reduce the workload associated with evaluating indoor air conditions.