Between heat and wildfire smoke, many people have been driven indoors this summer. Heat is one of the most dangerous conditions; more people die from heat waves than tornadoes and other disasters that make more news.
And the wildfire smoke has pushed the air quality index off the charts in a lot of places that aren’t used to such things. Not that anyone can get used to those levels; human lungs aren’t that good.
So people stay inside, with windows closed and air conditioners cranked up, and hope the power doesn’t go out.
The thing is, indoor air can also be bad for us, if not as immediately bad as heat or as obviously bad as smoke. The pandemic made clear that many viruses are airborne – something that should have been clear to all of us decades ago – so that breathing in places with poor ventilation means diseases spread quickly.
Lots of indoor spaces have lousy ventilation. Even fewer of them have good filtration systems that screen out viruses and particulate matter.
Fires and heat waves have always been with us, though now they are much worse due to climate change and likely to continue getting worse. We are going to have to deal with them for some time to come, likely centuries even if we actually start doing things to repair the damage done to our atmosphere.
Fortunately, we can easily do quite a lot about indoor air quality, and, in fact, engineers have been working on that for quite some time. Our biggest problem is not the technology – it exists and isn’t even particularly expensive – but, as with most of the issues we face right now, the political will to get it done.
Back in 2021, ASHRAE (the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers) was asked by President Biden to address the issues caused by virus spread indoors. This week I listened to an introductory webinar on the standard conducted by a professor of engineering from Penn State who worked on it.
In four months – incredibly fast for an organization devoted to meticulous study of issues that often takes years to develop standards – they came up with Standard 241 on control of infectious aerosols. The standard addresses such things as amount of ventilation required to reduce the risk as well as filtration devices and other methods of limiting or destroying the viruses.
The original standard was recommended only, since it had not had the usual level of review, but now it is up for certification as an ANSI standard, which means that it can more easily be adopted into building codes and related regulation.
Standard 241 is obviously related to overall indoor air quality, but has been published separately from other ASHRAE standards that govern that. The intent, I think, is to allow those maintaining building systems to ramp up for epidemic conditions, rather than include such standards at all times. I gathered from the webinar that not everyone agrees with keeping them separate.
Given how many viruses are airborne, I think protection against airborne diseases should always be part of the indoor air quality system. While Covid was obvious and devastating, flu happens every year and other respiratory viruses spread regularly.
It seems to me that setting up buildings to minimize spread of disease as well as blocking toxic chemicals and particulate matter leads to healthier indoor spaces for everyone. Continue reading “The Air We Breathe”…