Indoor Air Quality or (IAQ) is the practice of measuring and testing  indoor air. This includes private homes, commercial buildings and businesses as well as schools and other public places.  Essentially anywhere you spend a great amount of time indoors, should be proactively monitored and managed. The quality of indoor air has long been proven to have both short and long-term impacts on human health. Therefore frequent monitoring is an important part of air quality management. IAQ is still an emerging field of study on the consumer side and will likely grow exponentially. 

Research in the past and present has been focused primarily on outdoor air quality as a result of pollution caused by industrialization. Rapid economic growth created smog and acid rain. Scientists started noticing a connection between outdoor air pollution and health effects. In 1970 Congress passed the Clean Air Act Amendments addressing outdoor air quality, which created air quality standards on allowable levels of outdoor pollutants. This was the starting point of Federal legislation resulting in governmental entities such as the EPA.

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Other areas of air quality monitoring and studies have involved occupational exposure establishing OSHA which works to create standards in protecting workers from hazardous workplace conditions. 

The EPA has identified 10 major indoor air pollutants. Though identified, the EPA still states on their website that " There are currently no federal government standards... (as of 1999)" except for a handful of indoor pollutants, an example of one would be radon. 

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Here at IAAR we believe that consumer air quality is just as critical at home, then it is outdoors and at work. Our goal here is to not only help consumers educate themselves about indoor air quality through advocacy and awareness, but to start a trend where it's standard practice to have good clean indoor air. 

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