Indoor Air Quality – A Safer Future
Exyte Hargreaves • 12 February 2021
We spend 80 – 90 per cent of our lives indoors, this is the equivalent of 53 years of our adult lives.
That was the statistic pre-pandemic before there was a risk of going out and the UK government ordered us all to stay home, control the virus and save lives which increased that figure even further. With the amount of time we spend indoors, now more than ever, good indoor air quality is of paramount to our wellbeing.
At Exyte Hargreaves, good indoor air quality has always been something that we’ve taken very seriously, creating safer indoor environments is what we do. Despite this, the topic of indoor air quality has never really been given the platform it deserves. That was until the past year, whilst it may have taken a global pandemic, the world has finally started the discussion and drive to create safer indoor environments.
We have been advocates of the benefits of good indoor air quality for decades; improved quality of sleep, elimination of allergens, balanced humidity, efficiency, reduced costs and the most important one of all- the health benefits. At the start of the pandemic we knew very little about the virus, however, the data quickly showed us that poor indoor air quality and ineffective ventilation are significant contributing factors to rapidly increasing the spread of the virus.
One of the many things we have learnt through all of this is that good indoor air quality is absolutely essential for our health and it is vital that we have effective ventilation in place to reduce the transmission of contaminated particles in the buildings we spend so much of our time in.
Whilst the drive to improve indoor air quality through effective ventilation is high up on the agenda at the moment, we have to acknowledge that this is mostly due to the current pandemic, which we all hope won’t be with us for too much longer, but what happens when we come out of the pandemic? Will the interest in improving indoor air quality and creating safer indoor environments through effective HVAC be lost? In an ideal world once we have overcome COVID-19, the word pandemic is something we won’t want to ever have to think about again and reducing the spread of contaminants such as virus particles will no longer be a priority for many. This is the moment we have to take a look at history, we have encountered a number of pandemics; influenza, Ebola, Zika and SARS-CoV-1 to name a few. None of these have quite hit us at the scale as COVID-19 has and by looking at the history of pandemics there will likely be another.
One thing that has been highlighted from the current pandemic is the fact that prevention and preparation are absolutely key and work far greater than acting in response. This is something we need to take with us when improving indoor air quality and continue to drive once the pandemic is over, not just to reduce the spread of contaminants but to improve our health overall for the future.
