Indoor Air Quality conditions within the baby bunk beds at Dutch daycare centers indicate the necessity for an improved ventilation design

The indoor quality of occupied space is of particular importance for babies during their first year as their lungs are still growing and adverse conditions could negatively affect this development. Nowadays, across the Netherlands, almost all of the babies spend their daytime in daycare centers, but relatively little is known about the different indoor environmental conditions present in the sleeping quarters and especially inside the baby bunk beds of the Dutch daycare centers. Therefore this research investigated the indoor air quality of the sleeping accommodation of daycare centers, especially for the microenvironment conditions within the baby beds. The type of baby bed is one of the critical factors of influencing indoor air quality, and unfortunately, the measured results inside the most commonly used baby bunk beds for infants aged 0-2 years old at the Dutch daycare centers showed the worst configurations. The recent research showed that the CO2 concentrations within baby beds are more than 20% higher than of the sleeping room itself. Clearly, it indicates that more attention is needed to improve the current IAQ within the sleeping microenvironment at Dutch daycare centers by improving the ventilation systems in our next phase of research .