The idea of air conditioning and improving air for human consumption goes back a long, long way. Long before we or our great, great, great, great, greatest ever, grandparents were born.
In olden times it was never pleasant to walk behind a horse drawn plough when the horse lifted its tail, yet that would not harm you. Probably, no definitely, a lot better than following a dirty diesel engine bus, with filthy particulate filled fumes billowing over your bicycle or car on the way to school or work – filling your poor baby’s lungs with crappy air.
Yet we didn’t think about the health impact….did we? Do we now? Well, we should.
Systems to create air movement, to catch the wind, to make a breeze, ventilate, heat and cool have been around for thousands of years. Those systems were all designed to ease discomfort and make occupants feel more comfortable.
Our forebears invented clever ways to improve air. To keep cool they had homes in caves and under-ground, where it’s cool. They did that not just a few tens of years ago, they did it twelve thousand years ago. Impressive. So as not to make this too much of a history lesson, let’s jump forward a few thousand years. Passing over the Egyptians, ancient Greeks – sorry guys – and on to the Romans who created trenches and spaces for naturally occurring hot and cold air to pass through to heat and cool rooms. I don’t know if they called them airducts – might have done since didn’t they build aqueducts?
Moving forward again, the Chinese are credited with inventing manual fans 3000 years ago – it’s very likely that other nations were doing the same because invention is frequently simultaneous, multi-geographical.
Ways to capture the cooling effect of the wind and water have been incorporated into building designs for thousands of years. This helps us understand how to heat and cool, how to ventilate and move odours away from under our noses.
Until recent times the truly harmful effects of bad air were not in every day conversations. If anything, the ancients taught the next generation not to accept poor living conditions, or sticky stinky air because it was unpleasant to live with. They improved the air and so can we.
When passive smoking went from general acceptance on to recognition that it might be a teeny bit unhealthy, was crossing that line the point at which air quality in buildings began to feel important? Remember the smokers’ room, where you shared air and smoke in a box room? Perhaps a tiny extract fan would take out a small amount of smoky air.
The similarity with air contamination in factories and workshops took a long time to translate into actions to prevent bad air quality, with its knock-on harmful effects on inhabitants of offices and homes.
Why is this important? I’ll leave you with:
- So how much water or liquid do we drink in a day? In our waking hours -16 hours. On average it’s about 3 litres a day. That’s about a fifth of a litre of liquid per hour.
- Now consider the mount of air you’d breathe in a day, unlike drinking we have to breathe 24 hours. 11,000 litres per day is average. That’s about 460 litres per hour….awake and asleep. Oh, my goodness, that’s a lot of air.
- A huge amount of air by comparison to the fluid intake. We should think a whole lot more about what we breathe.
