ABSTRACT
Since ventilation represents 20 to 40 percent of a building’s thermal load, A.S.H.R.A.E. in the 1970s took the most obvious way out of the energy crisis by lowering ventilation standards. For example, office building ventilation in 1977 was cut from 15 cubic feet per minute to 5 cubic feet per minute in 82.3, 4 Twenty years later, after a proliferation of articles on ventilation and sick building syndrome, the 1997 A.S.H.R.A.E., Fundamentals Handbook shows its undying faith in ventilation efficiency when it writes the following: “Outdoor air introduced into a building constitutes part of the spaceconditioning load which is one reason to limit air exchange rates . . . to the minimum required.”5 This demonstrates that efficiency is of central importance while human health is of secondary concern.
