This study investigated the thermal sensation of elderly people in Taiwan, older than 60 years, in indoor microclimate at home, and their requirements for establishing thermal comfort. The study was conducted using both a thermal sensation questionnaire and measurement of indoor climatic parameters underlying the thermal environment. Survey results were compared with those reported by Cheng and Hwang (2008, J. Tongji Univ., 38, 817–822) for non‐elders to study the variation between different age groups in requirements of indoor thermal comfort. The results show that the predominant strategy of thermal adaptation for elders was window‐opening in the summer and clothing adjustment in the winter. The temperature of thermal neutrality was 25.2°C and 23.2°C for the summer and the winter, respectively. Logistically regressed probit modeling on percentage of predicted dissatisfied (PPD) against mean thermal sensation vote revealed that the sensation votes corresponding to a PPD of 20% were ± 0.75 for elders, about ± 0.10 less than the levels projected by ISO 7730 model. The range of operative temperature for 80% thermal acceptability for elders in the summer was 23.2–27.1°C, narrower than the range of 23.0–28.6°C reported for non‐elders. This is likely a result of a difference in the selection of adaptive strategies. Taiwan in the last decade has seen a rapid growth in the elderly population in its societal structure, and as such the quality of indoor thermal comfort increasingly concerns the elderly people. This study presents the results from field‐surveying elders residing in major geographical areas of Taiwan, and discusses the requirements of these elders for indoor thermal comfort in different seasons. Through a comparison with the requirements by non‐elders, this study demonstrates the unique sensitivity of elders toward indoor thermal quality and the selection of adaptive strategies that need to be considered when a thermal comfort zone is attempted in a household of members consisting of different age groups.

The skin permeability (Kp) defines the rate of a chemical penetrating across the stratum corneum. This value is widely used to quantitatively describe the transport of molecules in the outermost layer of epidermal skin and indicate the significance of skin absorption. This study defined a Kp quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) based on 106 chemical substances of Kp measured using human skin and interpreted the molecular interactions underlying transport behavior of small molecules in the stratum corneum. The Kp QSAR developed in this study identified four molecular descriptors that described the molecular cyclicity in the molecule reflecting local geometrical environments, topological distances between pairs of oxygen and chlorine atoms, lipophilicity, and similarity to antineoplastics in molecular properties. This Kp QSAR considered the octanol-water partition coefficient to be a direct influence on transdermal movement of molecules. Moreover, the Kp QSAR identified a sub-domain of molecular properties initially defined to describe the antineoplastic resemblance of a compound as a significant factor in affecting transdermal permeation of solutes. This finding suggests that the influence of molecular size on the chemical’s skin-permeating capability should be interpreted with other relevant physicochemical properties rather than being represented by molecular weight alone.

A respirator fit test panel (RFTP) with facial size distribution representative of intended users is essential to the evaluation of respirator fit for new models of respirators. In this study an anthropometric survey was conducted among youths representing respirator users in mid-Taiwan to characterize head-and-face dimensions key to RFTPs for application to small-to-medium facial features. The participants were fit-tested for three N95 masks of different facepiece design and the results compared to facial size distribution specified in the RFTPs of bivariate and principal component analysis design developed in this study to realize the influence of facial characteristics to respirator fit in relation to facepiece design. Nineteen dimensions were measured for 206 participants. In fit testing the qualitative fit test (QLFT) procedures prescribed by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration were adopted. As the results show, the bizygomatic breadth of the male and female participants were 90.1 and 90.8% of their counterparts reported for the U.S. youths (P < 0.001), respectively. Compared to the bivariate distribution, the PCA design better accommodated variation in facial contours among different respirator user groups or populations, with the RFTPs reported in this study and from literature consistently covering over 92% of the participants. Overall, the facial fit of filtering facepieces increased with increasing facial dimensions. The total percentages of the tests wherein the final maneuver being completed was “Moving head up-and-down”, “Talking” or “Bending over” in bivariate and PCA RFTPs were 13.3–61.9% and 22.9–52.8%, respectively. The respirators with a three-panel flat fold structured in the facepiece provided greater fit, particularly when the users moved heads. When the facial size distribution in a bivariate RFTP did not sufficiently represent petite facial size, the fit testing was inclined to overestimate the general fit, thus for small-to-medium facial dimensions a distinct RFTP should be considered.