Home is where the health is: what indoor environment quality delivers a “healthy” home?

ABSTRACT

This study uses critical discourse analysis to review the belief structure surrounding cold and damp housing in New Zealand (NZ) finding that a strong belief structure exists in the NZ psyche that “cold and damp” housing is linked to poor health outcomes. This belief structure has led to recent changes to NZ law to ensure healthy rental housing is provided via the Healthy Homes Guarantee Act. This law utilises a healthy minimum temperature threshold of 18°C as set by the World Health Organisation (WHO). A review of the literature finds limited evidential basis for this minimum temperature threshold, concluding that there is no academic consensus on what indoor environment quality (IEQ) would be required to deliver a healthy home. Until future research fills this knowledge void the current temperature guidelines (18°C to 24°C) could be carefully utilised in conjunction with measures of relative humidity (RH 40% to 60%) and thermal comfort.

KEYWORDS:

• Indoor environment quality
• temperature
• relative humidity
• housing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by funding from the Building Research Levy Building Research Association of New Zealand (BRANZ) [LG0644].