ACR Journal

August | September 2020 The Covid-19 outbreak has made us all aware of the importance of good hygiene practices but it has also turned the spotlight on air movement and the health of a building’s occupants. We breathe in various types of micro-organisms all the time; many can be tolerated with no specific health care issues. But some viral infections such as SARS and Coronaviruses can easily spread and cause serious harm. One way of managing the spread of viruses is to inactivate them and break them down biologically and one of the most eective methods is the use of a UV lamp. It has been well documented that eective ventilation can play a critical role in controlling airborne viruses in ventilated spaces. The UK’s Deputy Chief Medical O‡cer, Jonathan Van-Tam, explained the importance of ventilation in buildings: “There is a definite truism across all of the science literature that ventilation is a most critical part of reducing transmissions for respiratory viruses.” AIR CONDITIONING 16 Clifford Saunders, Aermec UK’s Senior Applications Engineer, explains how fan coils offering both comfort and sanitisation of indoor air can make workplaces safer. UV lights road to recovery In the Unites States, ASHRAE created a task force to assess the eects of HVAC systems and the transmission of viruses in buildings, commenting that changes to a building’s operation could help reduce the risks of pathogen transmission. Researchers at the University of Oregon’s Biology and Built Environment Centre have conducted extensive studies and outlined a number of steps buildings owners can take to mitigate transmission and protect a building’s occupants, including exposure to ultraviolet light, which can reduce the ability of some viruses to survive. Air purifying The sterilising eects of ultraviolet light was first discovered in 1877 when the chemists Arthur Downes and Thomas Blunt showed that ultraviolet light had a destructive eect on bacteria. Since then ultraviolet light has been used for sterilising water, germicidal lamps in food establishments as well as sterilising hospitals. Volume 6 No.5 As well as Oregon University, The American Society for Microbiology (ASM) has also been examining the built environment and reported that UVC lamps can damage the DNA of bacteria, viruses and other pathogens, reducing their ability to survive. Its paper Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic: Built Environment Considerations To Reduce Transmission, published earlier this year also outlined the eectiveness of UV light in the built environment. Viral particles are small enough to pass through traditional high e‡ciency HEPA and Minimum E‡ciency Reporting Value (MERV) filters as the Sars-CoV-2 are between 80Nm and 160Nm (on average 0.1 microns), but they can be targeted by air purifying devices. ASM also suggests that light could be part of a mitigation strategy (https:// msystems.asm.org/content/5/2/e00245- 20) as UV light has been shown to reduce the viability of viruses and UVC light and is already used for deep cleaning in healthcare settings. Inadequate Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) poses a risk to the comfort of a building’s occupants but also their health - we are all familiar with sick building syndrome. Appropriate air management which ensures not only the comfort but the safety of individuals is vital to ensure the well-being and health of occupants. Aermec is Europe’s largest manufacturer of fan coil units and, with its manufacturing base in Italy, the company is only too aware of the devasting eects of Covid-19 across the country. Aermec responded by designing a dedicated range of fan coil units, which can address hygiene concerns by sanitising indoor air and help to make workplaces as safe as possible.