Indoor VOC Exposure, Human Microbiome Alterations, and Respiratory Health: An Environmental Health Perspective on Emissions from Residential Building Materials
Keywords:
indoor air quality, volatile organic compounds, building materials, human microbiome, respiratory health, environmental health policyAbstract
Indoor environments represent a complex interface between building materials, human occupants, and microbial ecosystems. Volatile organic compounds emitted from residential construction products have long been studied for their direct toxicity, but emerging evidence points to a more subtle pathway for harm: the alteration of the human microbiome and subsequent respiratory health effects. This paper presents a system-level analysis of the interplay between indoor volatile organic compound exposures, microbial community dynamics in the built environment, and the respiratory health of occupants. Moving beyond single-pollutant and single-species models, we address structural trade-offs inherent in material selection, ventilation architecture, and monitoring infrastructure. The discussion frames indoor air quality as a layered system involving emission sources, environmental transformation processes, human biological mediators, and governance mechanisms. We explore how choices in building material composition can shift the indoor microbial ecology, potentially driving dysbiosis of the human respiratory and gut microbiomes, with downstream consequences for asthma, allergy, and chronic inflammatory conditions. Particular attention is given to the robustness and resilience of the microbiome under continuous low-dose chemical stress, as well as fairness concerns arising from unequal exposure burdens across housing stocks. The paper integrates insights from environmental health, microbial ecology, and socio-technical infrastructure studies to argue for an expanded policy framework that moves from pollutant concentration thresholds toward integrated performance-based standards. Finally, we identify the need for longitudinal, multi-scale data infrastructures that couple chemical and biological sensing to enable adaptive governance of indoor spaces.
References
1. Wolkoff, P., & Nielsen, G. D. (2001). Organic compounds in indoor air—their relevance for perceived indoor air quality. Atmospheric Environment, 35(26), 4407–4417.
2. Uhde, E., & Salthammer, T. (2007). Impact of reaction products from building materials and furnishings on indoor air quality—a review of recent advances in indoor chemistry. Atmospheric Environment, 41(15), 3111–3128.
3. Weschler, C. J. (2009). Changes in indoor pollutants since the 1950s. Atmospheric Environment, 43(1), 153–169.
4. Deng, Q., Yang, X., & Zhang, J. S. (2009). Study on a new correlation between diffusion coefficient and temperature in porous building materials. Atmospheric Environment, 43(12), 2080–2083.
5. Nazaroff, W. W., & Weschler, C. J. (2004). Cleaning products and air fresheners: exposure to primary and secondary air pollutants. Atmospheric Environment, 38(18), 2841–2865.
6. Klepeis, N. E., Nelson, W. C., Ott, W. R., Robinson, J. P., Tsang, A. M., Switzer, P., ... & Engelman, W. H. (2001). The National Human Activity Pattern Survey (NHAPS): a resource for assessing exposure to environmental pollutants. Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology, 11(3), 231–252.
7. Mendell, M. J. (2007). Indoor residential chemical emissions as risk factors for respiratory and allergic effects in children: a review. Indoor Air, 17(4), 259–277.
8. Kortenkamp, A., Backhaus, T., & Faust, M. (2009). State of the art report on mixture toxicity. European Commission Report, 75.
9. Fan, Y., Hu, C., Wang, Z., Wang, H., Zhang, R., Jiang, D., ... & Koutrakis, P. (2025). Residential VOC from building materials: Exposures, health risks, and ambient hazards. Sustainable Cities and Society, 119, 106080.
10. Dickson, R. P., Erb-Downward, J. R., & Huffnagle, G. B. (2014). The role of the bacterial microbiome in lung disease. Expert Review of Respiratory Medicine, 8(2), 245–257.
11. Adams, R. I., Bateman, A. C., Bik, H. M., & Meadow, J. F. (2015). Microbiota of the indoor environment: a meta-analysis. Microbiome, 3, 49.
12. Bisgaard, H., Hermansen, M. N., Buchvald, F., Loland, L., Halkjaer, L. B., Bønnelykke, K., ... & Bisgaard, H. (2007). Childhood asthma after bacterial colonization of the airway in neonates. New England Journal of Medicine, 357(15), 1487–1495.
13. Rennie, D. C., Lawson, J. A., Kirychuk, S. P., & Paterson, C. (2008). A review of the association between indoor environmental factors and childhood asthma. Journal of Asthma, 45(6), 411–416.
14. Arrieta, M. C., Stiemsma, L. T., Dimitriu, P. A., Thorson, L., Russell, S., Yurist-Doutsch, S., ... & Finlay, B. B. (2015). Early infancy microbial and metabolic alterations affect risk of childhood asthma. Science Translational Medicine, 7(307), 307ra152.
15. Gilbert, J. A., & Stephens, B. (2018). Microbiology of the built environment. Nature Reviews Microbiology, 16(11), 661–670.
16. Hess-Kosa, K. (2011). Indoor air quality: sampling methodologies. CRC Press.
17. Huang, Y. J., & Boushey, H. A. (2015). The microbiome in asthma. Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, 135(1), 25–30.
18. Rook, G. A. (2013). Regulation of the immune system by biodiversity from the natural environment: an ecosystem service essential to health. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110(46), 18360–18367.
19. Levin, H. (2018). Building ecology: an architect’s perspective on health and sustainability. Routledge.
20. Fisk, W. J. (2017). The ventilation problem in schools: literature review. Indoor Air, 27(6), 1039–1051.
21. Ao, C. H., & Lee, S. C. (2005). Indoor air purification by photocatalyst TiO2 immobilized on an activated carbon filter installed in an air cleaner. Chemical Engineering Science, 60(1), 103–109.
22. Mendell, M. J., & Heath, G. A. (2005). Do indoor pollutants and thermal conditions in schools influence student performance? A critical review of the literature. Indoor Air, 15(1), 27–52.
23. Salthammer, T., Mentese, S., & Marutzky, R. (2010). Formaldehyde in the indoor environment. Chemical Reviews, 110(4), 2536–2572.
24. Morawska, L., Thai, P. K., Liu, X., Asumadu-Sakyi, A., Ayoko, G., Bartonova, A., ... & Williams, R. (2018). Applications of low-cost sensing technologies for air quality monitoring and exposure assessment: how far have they gone? Environment International, 116, 286–299.
25. Kumar, P., Morawska, L., Martani, C., Biskos, G., Neophytou, M., Di Sabatino, S., ... & Britter, R. (2015). The rise of low-cost sensing for managing air pollution in cities. Environment International, 75, 199–205.
26. Kitchin, R. (2014). The data revolution: big data, open data, data infrastructures and their consequences. Sage.
27. Sundell, J. (2017). Reflections on the history of indoor air science, focusing on the last 50 years. Indoor Air, 27(4), 708–724.
28. Dietert, R. R., & Silbergeld, E. K. (2015). Biomarkers for the 21st century: listening to the microbiome. Toxicological Sciences, 144(2), 208–216.
29. Adamkiewicz, G., Zota, A. R., Fabian, M. P., Chahine, T., Julien, R., Spengler, J. D., & Levy, J. I. (2011). Moving environmental justice indoors: understanding structural influences on residential exposure patterns in low-income communities. American Journal of Public Health, 101(S1), S238–S245.
30. Spengler, J. D., & Chen, Q. (2000). Indoor air quality factors in designing a healthy building. Annual Review of Energy and the Environment, 25(1), 567–600.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Journal of Advanced Artificial Intelligence Research
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
