The Healthy House (2001) by John Bower, is a very well organized reference work on almost everything that needs to be done to ensure a healthy home, i.e. a house with good indoor air quality, free of most gases, odors, particulates, or dust. This comprehensive work is good for anyone interested in living in a healthy home and is essential for anyone who is chemically sensitive or has suffered from sick building syndrome. First, John Bower introduces the reader to indoor air quality and other fundamentals. He then discusses the subsystems contained within a building and explains the different materials and components that go into building a house, specifically the health aspects of each. He follows up with detailed examples of three healthy houses along with a complete section of resource material detailing organizations and suppliers that may be contacted for getting started on creating or recreating a healthy home.
Basically, a healthy house is defined by the indoor air quality. Since most people spend the majority of their time indoors, it is paramount that the quality of air within buildings be clean and free from pollutants. However, "the atmosphere inside most houses is typically 5-10 times worse than the outdoor air, and the concentration of individual air pollutants can easily be 100 times higher indoors than outdoors" (Bower, 2001, p. 21). There are no regulations concerning indoor air pollutants since by law the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is only required to be concerned with outdoor air pollutants.
There are several major indoor air pollutants, but the ones most often referred to are: carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, asbestos, radon, particulates, ozone, and formaldehyde (Bower, 2001, p. 28). There are two types of air pollutants, particulates and gases. Gas is a "formless fluid that fills the space containing it" (p. 28) and "particulates are tiny particles floatin...