Modern Building Services

20 MODERN BUILDING SERVICES AUGUST 2022 FEATURE INDOOR AIR QUALITY Are your meeting rooms stifling decision-making? Why and how we need to improve indoor air quality Upgrading buildings’ ventilation, filtration, and other factors would not only decrease COVID transmission but also improve health and cognitive performance in general says Simon Jones , Head of Air Quality at Ambisense. H ere is something you may not know - an adult human being breathes in and out up to 11,000 litres of air a day at rest?When you consider howmuch air one individual breathes in and out daily, it quickly becomes clear: wherever many people spend time together indoors, the air quality can rapidly decrease. Studies have found that in North America and Europe, we spend a staggering 90% of our time indoors - yet most of us rarely spare a thought for the quality of the air we breathe there. The real cost of poor air quality in the office Have you ever stopped to consider howmuch poor air quality is costing your business? Chances are it’s more than you think. Whether it’s poor air quality affecting productivity or pollutants which can impact both physical andmental health, poor air quality in the office is an invisible threat. Yet it’s easy to justify not doing anything. The compound effect of a day off here or there or intermittently poor performance may be hard to see, but cumulatively the effect is real. Could it be reducing the performance of the business by 5%, 10%, or even 15%? Also, it is now widely acknowledged that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID, is frequently transmitted by airborne droplets called aerosols that hang in the air and can travel over short and long distances. This is a virus that spreads through the air almost exclusively indoors. If we start there, then the building matters and therefore improving indoor air quality is becoming even more crucial, especially with the return to the offices. Many people still don’t feel safe coming into the office. While the hygiene theatre of signage and hand sanitisers is still with us, the fact that COVID was, and is, airborne, is not missed by the workforce. We must deal with the fact that poor ventilation is in part responsible for the spread of this disease, as indeed it is with many others.