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Air quality campaigner tells industry to ‘stop cutting corners’
The BESA National Conference heard an impassioned plea from a high profile air quality campaigner for the building engineering industry to do everything it can to protect people from the worst effects of air pollution
W
orld Health Organisation (WHO) advocate for health & air quality Rosamund Adoo Kissi-Debrah warned conference delegates
that someone always paid the price when corners were cut in construction projects. She also urged the industry to stop “looking for loopholes” in standards and regulations. The Association responded to her challenge by launching its ‘Building Safe Havens’ campaign during the conference at a London hotel. Its Health & Well-being in Buildings Group chair Nathan Wood calling for engineers, local authorities, building owners and FMs to focus on ensuring buildings could function as clean air ‘safe havens’ from rising outdoor pollution. Ms Kissi-Debrah’s daughter Ella died in 2013
following a series of acute asthma attacks that have now been linked to spikes in pollution close to her home. The coroner recently ordered a second inquest into her death and she may become the first person in the world to have air pollution recorded on her death certificate. However, Ella’s legal team face considerable opposition from as yet undisclosed parties. A report by Professor Stephen Holgate, a leading asthma specialist, said pollution levels at a monitoring station one mile from Ella's home consistently exceeded EU limits over the three months before her death. He found harmful PM2.5 particles in multiple samples taken from her body and the judges in Ella’s case said there was new evidence to suggest the state may have failed to comply with Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects the right to life.
Controlled
Professor Holgate has also subsequently conducted research, which showed that indoor air quality (IAQ) can be 13 times worse that outside air, but that it can be controlled. “If my daughter was still alive today she would
still be struggling because things are not improving,” Ms Kissi-Debrah told the BESA Conference. “People feel sorry for me, but they don’t seem to think this problem has got anything to do with them. Yet every action we take can have a consequence for
“Air that is filtered and supplied by mechanical
ventilation is seen as suspicious or ‘genetically modified’. This is leading to a number of impractical and harmful solutions.”
Asthma is the number one childhood illness in the UK with one child admitted to hospital every 20 minutes with an asthma attack. Three people die from the condition everyday “and at least two of those deaths are avoidable”, according to the Ella Roberta Foundation (
http://ellaroberta.org/), which was set up in memory of her daughter by Ms Kissi-Debrah. Ms Kissi-Debrah helped to launch the ‘Building
Health & Well-being in Buildings Group chair Nathan Wood, BESA chief executive David Frise and Air quality campaigner Rosamund Kissi-Debrah at the BESA National Conference
someone else such as driving a diesel car or using a wood burning stove. “I keep being told that things are improving and the air is getting cleaner, but the evidence does not back that up.” 40,000 premature deaths are linked to poor air quality in the UK every year and 8.8 million globally. It costs our economy upwards of £20 billion a year, largely due to the additional burden on the NHS. BESA chief executive officer David Frise told the
conference that it was a scandal that a child born today would live for two years less than previous generations because of air pollution. He said the Association was ready to take up the ‘safe havens’ challenge and work with other like-minded organisations to focus minds on the IAQ challenge highlighted in Professor Holgate’s research. “There is this strange perception in the UK that outside air is, in some way, ‘organic’, so natural ventilation must be the answer,” said Mr Frise.
Safe Havens’ campaign at the conference. The principle being that buildings can be converted into indoor clean air zones if the right targeted investments are made and good maintenance regimes are put in place.
She pointed out that people spend between 80 and 90% of their time indoors making indoor air quality (IAQ) one of the country’s most pressing health issues.
“London is making progress on tackling pollution
from transport, but it will be a long time before roads like the South Circular are safe for asthma sufferers, but could we not have done more to protect Ella when she was at home or in school?” asked Mr Wood, who is also managing director of clean air contractor Farmwood M&E. “We are reaping the whirlwind created by the
drive for energy efficiency that led to improvements in building air tightness without (in many cases) the necessary levels of ventilation to go with it,” he added. “As a result, building occupants are subject to greater concentrations
December 2019
www.heatingandventilating.net
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