Poor air quality is a little bit like a drought. People only properly talk about water scarcity when it’s not been raining for a while, and people only really talk about air quality issues when it’s affecting human health (i.e. it needs to be obvious before we acknowledge that there is a problem). The recent coronavirus outbreak has inadvertently made people think about the invisible forces that impact our health. In my opinion, a major problem is that air quality is something we don’t think about often enough, especially in buildings.

Someone pointed out to me recently that while the coronavirus is a real concern, just as many people die every year from carbon monoxide poisoning, chemical or air pollution-induced asthma or acute lower respiratory infections. What’s in our air affects not just our health, but our productivity and higher brain functions. Fortunately, chemicals, carbon monoxide and particulates in the air are all detectable by sensors, so we can do something about them in our building design and building applications. 

The average person spends 90% of their time indoors. Whilst this seems problematic and possibly unhealthy, in many places the outdoor air is bad enough that it becomes difficult to breathe. Then, being inside a building can become the safest place, where building level HVAC systems containing various filters remove contaminants from the air. 

Clean air is not only a concern for your physical health, but for your mental productivity. Have you ever wondered why you sleep so well at a cabin or when you go camping? The reason for this is largely because there is so much less carbon dioxide in the air. Trees absorb it, which means that the average ambient level of carbon dioxide in a forest is close to 350 ppm (parts per million). There are many sources of CO2, but people breathing is the single largest source in most building applications. In the average building it’s difficult to keep the carbon dioxide levels below 600 ppm, made even harder when you fill a room with people. You know that feeling of fatigue you get in a meeting room full of people? It’s not just because the meeting is boring that you feel so tired, it’s the CO2 levels getting to 2,000 ppm (although the meeting might also be dull). 

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