Could you be languishing under legionnaires' disease, or suffering silently from sick building syndrome? These are just two of the alarming possibilities that Dr James P. McLaughlin may explore tonight under the innocuous title "The Indoor Air Climate".
Snugly encapsulated in our houses, offices or factories, we have achieved a fair measure of independence from the weather we experience outdoors. For example, as Jonathan Swift remarked, " 'Tis very warm weather when one's in bed". Cocooned in the cosiness of the ancestral four-poster, we are largely immune from the vagaries of meteorology. But not entirely so: mist and fog, for example, are a frequent occurrence in the bathroom, often reducing visibility to a yard or two.
Moreover, in the case of Swift's bedroom, the Dean, as he retired, would probably have been able to gaze through the clear windows of his deanery and see the lights of Dublin twinkling as he thought of Stella. But two things happen as he sleeps: the room temperature falls, and the Dean himself adds to the moisture content of the air by exhalation. By next morning the relative humidity in the room will be much higher than it was the night before, and where the now almost saturated air comes in contact with the cold glass of the window pane, it may well be cooled sufficiently for some of its moisture to condense, leaving the pane opaque with condensation.
The first real step towards controlling our indoor environment was the discovery of fire. It allowed man to supplement such heat as he acquired from clothing with further warmth from an external source. The technique was perfected by the ancient Romans who devised the hypocaust, a somewhat elaborate heating system in which air warmed outside a building was brought under the floor of each room, or behind the walls, through hollowed tiles. Such techniques were forgotten with the decline of the Roman Empire, until resurrected relatively recently in the form of modern central heating.
But such comforts have potential downsides, and it is on these that Dr McLaughlin will concentrate tonight as he gives an overview of the quality of indoor air, with particular emphasis on those ingredients of an artificially controlled environment that may have an adverse effect upon our health. The learned doctor, from the physics department of UCD, is but the latest in the long line of celebrities periodically summoned to appear before members of the Irish Meteorological Society to provide an apologia pro vita sua.
Silent witnesses to his ordeal are welcome to attend in Room G23 of the Earlsfort Terrace complex, UCD, at 8 p.m.