Some clarification about the direct or inverse proportional of day lighting to the indoor environment is needed.
Hospitral is a place where people who are phisically sick and intern psychologically disturbed are there.The IEQ is directly proportional to the sunlight bcoz sunlight helps in keeping the hospital interiors hygienic naturally without using any artificial means.More over sunlight heals a person pschologically so, more the sunlight,more the recovery.
Using the daylight brings a variety of solar radiation waves back into the room.
This applies both physically and psychologically impacts. Physically it can kill unhealthy dangerous microorganisms; and psychologically it makes warm and comfortable environment. So using daylight can have a positive impact on the indoor air quality.
This is a very interesting question.
Speaking strictly about air quality, I would say that daylight has a minor impact, as the air contaminants would still be present and minimally affected.
As a previous person responded, direct sunlight can be useful to kill pathogens, but I have not yet heard of a project doing this purposefully. Lighting varies throughout the day and would not be reliable in this way. If you know otherwise, let me know. I am aware of artificial UV lights in buildings used to kill pathogens.
The most significant factor in my opinion is a positive impact psychologically. There are many studies showing that daylight improves morale of patients and staff. However, excessive daylight and glare can be detrimental. Further, this is very much a cultural issue, as regions with less sunlight (e.g. Scandinavia, Pacific Northwest USA) place a greater value on daylight and views, while regions closer to the equator seem to place a lesser value on daylight.
Daylight helps regulate cortisol and melatonin levels, which impacts on body's circadian rhythm (Steven Lockley). "(...)light is the major environmental time cue that resets the clock in our brains each day so that we remain synchronized with the 24-hour day. In turn, the clock regulates our sleep and wake cycle, our mood, alertness and performance patterns, hormones, heart rate, and many other functions" (Steven Lockley, 2012).
"(...)some health professionals believe that daily exposure to high levels of daylight illuminance may have signicant, long-term health benets, and that this should be a design consideration (...)" (Webb, 2006 apud Mardaljevic, 2009).
Indoor environment of hospital comprises of technical equipment and biological microbial flora + humans (both patients and hospital staff).
The light coming from sun is solar spectrum which has 3 components UV,Visible,IR and minor amount of radiowaves. So the energy from these spectra is to be made useful in the interior designing/ indoor environment quality of hospital.
Majorly for the maintenance/functionality of the technical equipment the daylight (complete solar spectrum) is inversely proportional.
For the elimination of microbial/(fungal) growth, the daylight (UV spectrum) is directly proportional. For the indoor plant growth sunlight is directly proportional as indoor plant creates/improves the hope for life and as well as air(oxygen) filtration.
For majority of the patients daylight is directly proportional to their physiological/metabolic and psycholoigical enhancement depending on the therapeutic pattern for the specific pathology and for few pathologies treatment the daylight is inversely proportional.
So the daylight affect on IEQ of hospital varies depending on the specific component of the indoor environment
Thank you all for your valuable and informative answer to the question related to my research topic. I would really appreciate if you could also guide me through with some more interesting answers in future.
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