Modern Building Services

22 MODERN BUILDING SERVICES FEBRUARY 2022 FEATURE INDOOR AIR QUALITY INDOOR AIR QUALITY S ince the beginning of 2020, indoor air quality has gone from a very niche topic to mainstream news and now perhaps to overload (I get the irony). There has also been a rush of new blood into a fledgling market with many people hoping to capitalise on prospective funding like that made in the USA, the so called “Covid Dollars”. The reality was the UK government seemingly had its’ head in the sand regarding aerosol transmission. Perspex screens shot up everywhere making airflow worse and we sanitised everything in sight, massively raising levels of VOCs. Showing that you were doing something was more important than doing something shown to be effective. As the UK is so driven by guidance and legislation, the majority of landlords and occupiers sat on their hands waiting from direction from on-high. A lack of forward guidance from government left the newly expanded IAQ improvement industry struggling to find direction for 18 months. Many companies formed to capitalise on the seemingly imminent opportunity presented by Covid have now folded. Many of these failed ventures fully invested in a single “novel” solution that has subsequently not been recommended by SAGE or CIBSE. You can see from the comments on social media that there are a lot of frustrated people whose independently verified solution is not the one supported by SAGE or CIBSE. Many a current sales strategy is now centred around discrediting other solutions rather than promoting the virtues of the solution the person is promoting. I guess we have the US to thank for this, as many of the novel clean air technologies are imported from there, along with their very un- British sales and marketing styles. SOWHERE IS THE INDUSTRY GOING? What solutions are going to be recommended and critically, funded? A £25M Covid business fund released in Scotland in October prioritised ventilation improvements; offering the majority of funding for CO2 monitors, extract fans and re-instating existing ventilation openings, minimal funding was made available for portable air purifiers. £3.31M of Covid grants for schools inWales will be allocated according to the results from 30,000 CO2 monitors provided over the autumn term. CO2 monitoring has also been made available to schools in England, 300,000 of these sensors were eventually provided, much criticism has been directed at the government saying not enough CO2 monitors have been made available, and about the amount of time it took to deliver them. In England, schools had to wait a long time for guidance on what funding, if any would be made available. Portable air purifiers were evaluated by the DfE and a pair of small HEPA air purifier units by Dyson and Camfil were made available on a government portal. Schools were then told to purchase these from their own funds. So far, only a handful of schools had sufficient funds available to place orders through this portal. A £1.8M ongoing trial that began in September will see 30 schools in Bradford putting standalone HEPA air purifiers against upper room ultraviolet systems to see if either technology can make a meaningful difference to Covid infection rates. By AdamTaylor CEO ARM Environments Air Quality improvement providers facing a rollercoaster ride