Concentration of Formaldehyde, Acetaldehyde, and Five Volatile Organic Compounds in Indoor Air: The Clean-Healthy House Construction Standard (South Korea)

The authors evaluate indoor air quality in apartments built according to the South Korean Clean-Healthy House construction standard. The evaluation includes three types of residential units with differing gross floor areas. Indoor air was analyzed for formaldehyde (observed range 52.0–99.2 ug/m), acetaldehyde (14.6–61.0 ug/m), benzene (0.6–1.3 ug/m), toluene (161.8–371.0 ug/m) ethylbenzene (6.5–17.0 ug/m), xylene (14.7–45.0 ug/m), and styrene (37.7–112.5 ug/m). The concentrations of all analyzed substances were within the South Korean guidelines. The findings confirm that the Clean-Healthy Homes initiative has led to a greatly improved indoor air environment compared to existing newly built apartment blocks in South Korea. However, this construction standard is applied only to large apartment developments comprising 1,000 or more units, and it seems that further effort should be made to extend the standard to stand-alone residences and small-scale apartment blocks in order to ensure that indoor air quality is maintained more widely.