Owners of shops, offices, restaurants, museums, and all kinds of other commercial establishments where people work or visit have run out of excuses for not having properly designed, installed, and maintained mechanical ventilation.
Not just recirculation of stale air with standard systems. Not just opening doors and windows during the summer. Not just showy, short-term efforts during the pandemic. Investing in indoor air quality (IAQ) year-round and in the long term is necessary. Indoor air quality (IAQ) was neglected for so long due to a combination of reasons such as costs, attitudes, knowledge, lack of legislation, and public pressure. Covid taught us that ventilation is of paramount importance, and as the cold season approaches, this is a topic we need to discuss. When it soon gets 5°C outside, it won’t be good to keep the back door open.
The winter of 2021 is our first real test. Have employers and building owners learned anything from the past 18 months? Do the buildings meet the requirements of the building regulations? If employers do nothing about these issues, should they reopen their doors again?
Riding the wave of mental health and productivity
The topic of mental health has never been more popular in society, partly thanks to the pandemic and its documented effects on loneliness and other issues.
The wave of awareness about good physical health now also covers workplaces, supported by the new, innovative, and certifiable international WELL Building Standard. This is a new assessment system designed to improve the healthy environment in public buildings and includes 10 indicators, covering air and mind.
Why is this important? It’s important because forward-thinking companies are the ones that will benefit. They assess where they are falling short and take action to invest in their staff and business results.
A new study by Harvard University found that office air quality can have a significant impact on employees’ speed of thinking, ability to focus, and productivity. The study of 300 office workers in six countries, including the United Kingdom, across sectors from engineering to architecture, found that increased concentrations of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and lower ventilation rates (measured by CO2 levels) are associated with longer reaction times and reduced cognitive accuracy in employees.
“Our study adds to the emerging evidence that air pollution affects our mental abilities,” says the lead author José Lorán, research fellow at the Department of Environmental Health.
“The study confirmed that low ventilation levels negatively affect cognitive function... poor indoor air quality impacts health and productivity significantly more than we previously knew.”
Forward-thinking companies will choose to return to normal employee work — from the office. We fully support the long-overdue revolution of the hybrid work model, but many people, especially young and new employees, want to return to the office full-time because they miss social interaction, absorbing the company culture, improving teamwork and cohesion, as well as having the occasional laugh and joke.
Progressive and proactive companies will retain their best employees and attract new talents who feel motivated to work in a clean, modern environment that guarantees them healthy working conditions.
Legislation on the horizon
New offices and commercial establishments will be required to install better ventilation systems to help reduce the spread of airborne diseases like Covid, according to current government proposals.
According to the latest update (January 2021) of the Advisory Document for the Future Buildings Standard, government offices must have systems capable of providing fresh air at levels 50% higher than the existing minimum standards. This would allow “the use of higher ventilation rates in case of increased infection levels, such as during a future pandemic.
The proposals acknowledge widespread concerns related to the need for redesign, such as increasing the cross-sectional area of air ducts and AHUs, boosting fan power, higher ceiling cavities, and stronger electrical supply.
We expect the final impact assessment report, which is to be prepared by April 2022, along with its recommendations and effects.
Meanwhile, in Ireland, the proposed legislation aims to ensure a certain standard of workplace ventilation and to give employees the right to request an official inspection.
“It’s quite a crazy situation that we’ve been 18 months into a pandemic… and we don’t have laws regarding ventilation,” said Paul Murphy, TD (Teachta Dála) from the People Before Profit party.
In other countries, national newspapers are running clean air campaigns, and COP26 can only serve to strengthen political and public pressure.
Have landlords and bosses considered lower energy consumption (i.e., smaller bills) and their carbon footprint commitments with better ventilation?
Cheap effective measures
Ultimately, the impact on redesign costs is the most common reason why buildings are not upgraded to complex mechanical ventilation systems to reduce disease transmission and improve employee productivity or customer satisfaction.
It also matters who is the responsible party to make the payment. Most companies are tenants, so they rely on landlords or building owners. Reduced energy consumption and lower bills are good incentives, along with fulfilling net-zero commitments. Grants are also offered. But is that enough?
Putting that aside, there are some very useful temporary cheap measures that commercial establishments can take in the meantime.
Air purifiers are ideal for spaces that don’t have adequate ventilation systems or for companies with facilities or areas lacking modern ventilation. They continuously clean the air and remove harmful particles through constant filtration.
They are cheap, small, portable, and unobtrusive. We have just launched our flagship Airpur series – air purifiers with HEPA filters that have a filtering efficiency of up to 99.95%.
CO2 monitors are another simple and trustworthy option. Our new wireless AirSens range monitors indoor air quality and, if a spike is detected in any of the three parameters—CO2, VOC, or RH—it sends a signal to the ventilation systems to increase the airflow rate.
In new Covid guidelines this summer, the government recommended using CO2 monitors in various sectors to help identify poorly ventilated indoor spaces.
Ultimately, the combination of vision and investment will pave the way to a healthier indoor future, where we spend 80% of our time. Perhaps, in the beginning, it just needs to be driven by legal and moral standards and incentives.
