Students’ self-reported health and psychosocial status at home before and during COVID-19

During the COVID-19 outbreak, university courses were shifted online and students spent the majority of their time inside their homes. However, staying indoors can affect students’ health due to the exposure to several environmental stressors, such as background noise, and/or inefficient ventilation, and/or insufficient lighting. Previous...

CO2 monitoring to assess ventilation rate: practical suggestions from a laboratory study

Several recent studies have demonstrated that ventilation plays an important role in the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 (the coronavirus that causes COVID-19) in public buildings, such as schools. However, there are no clear rules on how to assess the ventilation performance in classrooms, especially during a pandemic. Therefore, the main objective...

Visualisation of the airflow pattern of exhaled droplets in a classroom

The airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in educational buildings has raised concerns during the current COVID-19 pandemic. In this study, a portable fog generator system was designed and assembled to visualise the airflow pattern of exhaled droplets in a classroom. The system consists of five components: medium, fog generator, buffer, pump, and...

Under Pandemic: Assessment of Ventilation in Secondary Schools in The Netherlands

To investigate the sufficiency of ventilation during the COVID-19 pandemic for school children, a field study was conducted in 37 classrooms of 11 Dutch secondary schools between October 2020 and June 2021. All the classrooms were visited twice, before and after a three-month national lockdown, when different measures against COVID-19 were taken...

Interaction effects of acoustics at and between human and environmental levels: A review of the acoustics in the indoor environment

People spend around 90% of their time indoors, where they are exposed to various physical stressors, such as unpleasant sounds, odours, temperature, and lighting, which may cause annoyance and discomfort. This literature review is focused on substantial studies that emphasize noise as a physical stressor in the indoor environment. Previous...

Ventilation strategies of school classrooms against cross-infection of COVID-19: A review

Under current pandemic of COVID-19, children are still spending long hours in school classrooms every day. A literature study is therefore conducted to investigate the current ventilation strategies used in schools and assess their performance of controlling contagious respiratory diseases in the indoor environment, and also to seek for future...