Pre Covid it was common practice to breathe without giving air a second thought. Back then I didn’t shake hands with anyone who had a cold or stomach infection, but if I did I’d leave then squeeze the hand sanitiser. No thought, none at all, for the air surrounding the infected person.
How stupid was that – very, because I knew quite a lot about airborne pollutants (crap) but did not engage my brain.
Brain now engaged, I reviewed what I knew. I did more desk research about airborne pathogens, bought air monitors and began a new health regime of extreme social distancing. This meant no gym, no meetings, windows open whenever possible – loads of country air.
Why is bad air quality a problem?
Bad air is dangerous – really bad air can severely affect your health. In the worst cases it can maim and kill. A canary in a cage springs to mind because miners used them to detect poisonous gases in mines.
Poor indoor air quality affects infants and children far more than adults since the breathing rate per kilogram of bodyweight of the young is up to 6 times more than an adult *.
Indoor air quality is in our lungs and on our lips. At long last it’s being talked about but it needs even greater exposure and way more publicity before we can be assured that it’s safe to continue breathing.
We can’t all live and work where the air is free from contamination, but what we can do is stop assuming the air in a building is clean and that it is free.
How to improve air quality indoors
The air in a room gets stale. The aim is to get rid of that stale air and replace it with lovely, fresh, clean air. There are a multitude of ways to improve indoor air quality, and many benefits to doing so. Enter the ventilation discussion and the world of extraction, supply, ventilation, filtration, heat recovery, mixing, comfort cooling, humidification, the battle of the thermostat, purifying, detection, sensors, monitors, and engineers and scientists in fields of biology, physics and chemistry.
Indoor air extraction is fairly straightforward but now needs a little more thought in terms of where the air goes to when it leaves the room. It could go into someone else’s face, or their space, or it could find its way back into the room it came from. It is not okay to say that’s not my problem as long as it’s not in my room – that kind of thinking is why the UK has such a problem with fly tipping. Please don’t chuck the stale air anywhere, manage it to help yourselves and others.
Envirotec can help with air extraction and even more besides. We can assess, survey, report, repair and repurpose, or make anew from a simple extract unit to a complete system.
*Infants also breathe 3.5 times more than an adult
Interested to find out more?
Envirotec offers a huge range of products and services. If you want to know what would be best for your building, just give us a call on 01494 525342 or speak to Tim on 07557 747 400 and we can give you all the information you need to make an informed decision.
