Indoor Air Quality Perception in Built Cultural Heritage in Times of Climate Change

Abstract

Low quality in a museum’s internal microclimate can induce both the deterioration of the exhibit collections, as well as affecting the health of visitors, employees and restorers. Starting from this premise, the present study aims to study the perception of visitors and employees of Darvas-La Roche Museum House (Romania) in relation to the air quality in the exhibition spaces. Their opinions were analyzed based on a questionnaire comprising 11 items aimed at understanding the influence of the indoor environment on the health of individuals, the degree of disturbance induced by the indoor air, if they experienced symptoms of illness after visiting the museum, etc. The obtained data were analyzed statistically in the SPSS 28 program, using tests such as coefficient, analysis of variance (ANOVA) and model summary, in order to obtain correlations between the sets of variables. The results obtained indicate that the majority of respondents perceived the indoor air quality as good, but there were also exceptions (approximately 20% of the respondents), which indicated different symptoms induced by the indoor air. Most of those (%) affected stated that they had pre-existing conditions, wear contact lenses or are smokers. In their case, the statistical-mathematical analyses indicated strong correlations between the ailments they suffer from and the appearance of certain discomforts (caused by too low or too high temperature, dust or dry air, etc.) and disease symptoms (nasal congestion, eye and skin irritations, coughs, migraines, frequent colds, etc.).