SPARES AND ACCESSORIES
Once in a lifetime chance to reset indoor spaces
The building services industry has a once in a lifetime opportunity to address the long-term health and wellbeing impacts of indoor environments thanks to growing public and scientifi c pressure, says Swegon’s head of marketing Josh Emerson.
A
n international group of infl uential engineers, scientists, and academics has just raised the stakes in the debate about
the role played by buildings in spreading disease and how good ventilation is vital for physical and mental health, wellbeing, comfort and productivity. In an article for the journal Science, the 40-strong group compared the current condition of indoor spaces to the contaminated urban water supplies in the fi rst half of the 19th century that led to thousands of deaths in Britain. They added that today’s lack of regulation for air quality contrasted starkly with strict public health controls on food, sanitation and drinking water.
The group wrote that there should be a “paradigm shift” in ventilation design and operation and an air quality certifi cation scheme for buildings that would give people back their confi dence in indoor spaces in the wake of the pandemic. Chadwick’s Sanitary Report of 1842 led the British government to impose new rules on cities designed to improve drinking water and sewerage systems and the group believes it is high time
22 July 2021 •
www.acr-news.com
something similar was done about air quality almost 200 years later. Cath Noakes, Professor of Environmental
Engineering for Buildings at the University of Leeds and a member of SAGE, the body that advises the UK Government on scientifi c emergencies, was one of the contributors to the study. She said the role played by air circulation in helping to transmit disease inside buildings had largely been ignored.
Pathogen levels
“The pandemic has exposed that defi ciency in our understanding and the way we seek to make buildings safer to use,” she said. “We need to introduce new mechanisms that keep pathogen levels in the air fl ow in buildings and other enclosed spaces to a minimum. That approach can be achieved with technology backed up by a requirement to meet new standards.” As a result of the pandemic, ventilation and
indoor environmental quality (IEQ) professionals have learned much more about the way aerosols can remain suspended in the air and help to spread
respiratory infections and viruses. The wearing of face coverings has been quite eff ective in slowing down the distribution of aerosols, but to really tackle the problem and properly reduce viral loads requires a well thought through ventilation strategy that not only considers air change rates, but also the direction of airfl ows. Many buildings were forced to rely on natural
ventilation to help refresh the air during lockdown periods, but this tactic can only ever be partially successful and can also expose occupants to other threats from the infl ow of contaminated outside air. The scientifi c group suggests the way indoor air
can exacerbate respiratory infections, particularly in schools, restaurants, and other busy public spaces, suggests that “the way we design, operate, and maintain buildings infl uences transmission”. The risk of people becoming cross-infected
inside a building can be reduced through ventilation coupled with air disinfection and fi ltration, but the scientists wrote that “almost no engineering-based measures to limit community respiratory infection transmission had been employed in public buildings
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