INDOOR AIR – YouTube – Tools for Schools: Indoor Air Quality Walkthrough – Urban
Why Clean Air Is Important to Building Occupants
Building air quality is important for a number of reasons: health, productivity, and safety. The first two reasons – health and productivity – are well known and well documented. Safety, however, is the least known, and is the focus of this article.
How does clean indoor air contribute to a safe indoor environment? Clean air is not achieved by accident but is the result of building owners and management working together and coming to a decision to incorporate clean air into the safety program. Building owners and management must not only make clean air a priority but must build extensive policies, action plans, and training requirements to sustain clean air activities.
When the owners and building managers consider indoor air, their minds focus on the HVAC system and the associated air handling units. While these systems are important, they are not the only focus for clean building air. One should consider other factors associated with safety – namely chemical use, water/mold bacteria, and viruses. These elements are primary safety issues that effect air quality.
Given the scope of safety issues, it’s easy for building owners and managers to ignore indoor air elements. But ignoring air quality has it own set of risks. The risk is two fold. First, someone could become sick or injured by bad indoor air, which directly leads to the second issue – lawsuit. Nothing concerns building owners and managers more than lawsuits. While air quality and safety lawsuits cannot be totally avoided, management’s records can act to either accentuate or repudiate the plaintiff’s claim – the choice is the building owner’s.
To avoid inclusion in the former category, ownership must demonstrate essential indoor air management fundamentals. These fundamentals include development of a “written” air quality policy, scheduling an independent policy review, and presenting the results to owners and management.
Finally, owners and management should take the time and ask themselves a few questions. How frequent is the air management plan executed: quarterly, monthly, some portions of the plan daily? Does building management meet with building staff/occupants and set expectations regarding safety procedures concerning chemical use, water/mold bacteria, and viruses? Do the building safety procedures and plan include a feedback mechanism to correct the procedures and plan? Are the corrections fed back in the policy review session?
As a building owner or management, if you cannot answer the above questions then I recommend that you contact your local indoor air quality professional for an evaluation of your air quality management practices or Call Triad Building Maintenance at 512-385-1189 or email Adrian Neely at a.neely@triadsvcs.com for a personal consultation.
By Christopher A. Douglas, CIAQM, LEED AP
Christopher Douglas answers questions on IAQ, LEED, and Building Energy Usage at http://www.triadsvcs.com/