The health impacts of an energy efficient building stock

This paper addresses the tension between the need to improve the energy efficiency of buildings and the requirement to ensure that in doing so, a healthy indoor environment is not compromised. We assess the potential impact on health from one very specific technology - window replacement - related to the delivery of the required reduction of CO2 emissions. This paper reports on work that has been undertaken in order to address the health impacts arising from fitting all replaced windows with trickle ventilators. We have used a set of building physics and health models to make estimates of impact under a range of assumptions. Whilst a range of pollutants has been considered in the wider project, in this paper we report only on the work done to date on the health impacts associated with mould. For a 10 year time horizon, the study estimated that (for the relevant number of dwellings each year) a baseline total of approximately 500 QALYs related to mould would be saved by such an intervention in England and Wales (1000 QALYs for a 20 year time horizon).