Creating a Better Environment

ACR News highlights the importance of indoor air quality (Jan 2014 edition)​

January 2014

Sick and tired without fans​

“A consequence of securing increased energy efficiency from our building stock is that our buildings have become more airtight (reports Alan Macklin – technical director of Elta Group). This has brought an even greater focus on indoor air quality, a point well illustrated by the HealthVent Project, a European Comission funded initiative which is a developing a set of guidelines aimed at ensuring a healthy living, working and learning environment for European citizens.

The results of the project – which began in 2010 – were presented earlier this year by the HeathVent Consortium at the European Parliament of Brussels and made for very interesting reading. Just the headline statistics illustrate what an important issue indoor air quality has become.

In Europe, people are estimated to spend 90% of their lifetime indoors. Research in 26 European countries has shown that diseases are due to  major indoor air exposures are estimated to represent two million healthy life years annually.

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Over half of these diseases are due to indoor exposure to pollutants originating outdoors, with the remainder due to pollutants from indoor sources including building materials, furnishing, equipment, consumer products and combustion, as well as the activities of people who frequent the buildings.

The basic premise of the guidelines is that there should be a shift towards a health-based approach to ventilation which current EU ventilation standards do not support, offering as they do only general guidance to controlling exposure to pollutants based on recommended levels of carbon dioxide and humidity indoors. Since fans are at the heart of ventilation systems they really are vitally important. We need to be mindful that in developing ever greener buildings, the environmental benefits must not be to the detriment of those for whom they are built.”