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Covid-19 has proven that poor indoor air quality can make you feel sick. We can fix it.

 


If a restaurant waiter brought you a glass of muddy, stinky water, it wouldn’t be acceptable. However, many waiters were still forced to breathe poorly ventilated air in crowded restaurants and other indoor spaces, at least before the Covid-19 pandemic.

And even today, “When someone asks the restaurant owner,’What is the ventilation here?’, A physicist and aerosol expert at the Queensland Institute of Technology in Australia, tells the World Health Organization about the spread of aerial pathogens. Lydia Morauska, who advised, says.

In the post-pandemic world, Morauska wants all of us to ask the question, “How about the ventilation here?” — More often. And not only the restaurant owners, but also the managers of the crowded indoor spaces we visit. You should expect to breathe in clean, virus-free air, just as you would put clean water in a glass. And it’s not just individuals who demand better air quality. Governments and technical bodies need to set new standards to ensure clean air for everyone.

The pandemic has shown that it makes people more susceptible to respiratory viruses in poorly ventilated areas. At this location, people with the virus can breathe through the nose and the mouth can remain in the air for a long time. Ventilation works by replacing potentially infectious old air with fresh, clean outdoors or by filtering the old air.

In the early days of the pandemic, Morauska led a group of air quality experts, Who recognizes Coronavirus can spread over long distances in aerosols (not only in close contact conditions below 6 feet). Ultimately, WHO and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have more clearly recognized this in their scientific guidance.

However, even after the pandemic is over, better ventilation is needed to prevent future outbreaks of respiratory illnesses such as colds and flu as well as the coronavirus.

Last week, Morauska and dozens of other air quality experts published a manifesto of some sort. Science, In search of “A paradigm shift to combat indoor respiratory infections.

“The government has promulgated a large amount of legislation for decades and has invested heavily in food safety, hygiene and drinking water for public health purposes,” Morauska and her co-authors said. writing. “In contrast, airborne pathogens and respiratory infections, whether seasonal influenza or Covid-19, are associated with the air we breathe in terms of regulation, standards, building design and operation. And it will be dealt with quite weakly. ”

Recently, I talked with Morauska about what the public needs to know about indoor air and how to use a carbon dioxide monitor to quickly determine the ventilation quality of a space. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Brian Lesnick

You and your co-authors write that a “paradigm shift” is needed in thinking about ventilation in infection prevention. What is the shift?

Lydia Morauska

Compare changes in thinking and behavior in relation to clean water.There was no clean water [standard] Before the movement of the 19th century began. People have admitted that water can be polluted or become sick drinking water.

Therefore, there was a paradigm shift.This is the same idea: you don’t have to accept getting sick from the respiratory tract [viruses that spread easily in poorly ventilated indoor air].. We should do something about it.

Brian Lesnick

You now have a centralized system for purifying water and removing pathogens from it. Treatment plant and water distribution. In the case of air, there is no centralized system for distribution to the community as well as clean water. Is this problem much more difficult than water quality?

Lydia Morauska

It’s difficult, but it’s not impossible.

The point with water is whether the water is polluted and you get sick soon afterwards. [drinking it], The whole neighborhood will make a fuss about it. However, we do not know if the air inside the building is polluted. If you get a cold or flu three or four days later, you don’t know if you caught a cold inside the building.

Brian Lesnick

So how do you make sure that the air in your indoor space isn’t polluted?

Lydia Morauska

You don’t have to come up with some new technologies. You need to use them. The simplest (perhaps oversimplified) is the display of CO2 levels. [Either via handheld CO2 monitors or CO2 monitors mounted in a public, visible space.]

Brian Lesnick

And can the CO2 concentration tell us that many people are breathing in this room and what they are exhaling is not being cleaned up immediately?

Lydia Morauska

exactly.

There are standards for CO2 levels, but in many buildings no one checks.But if it is obligatory [to display CO2 concentrations in an indoor space] Individuals could see poor ventilation.

Brian Lesnick

I think a lot of education is needed there. It is not intuitive to know that the CO2 concentration is high. Also, CO2 can be confusing because it is a few steps away from what you really want to know. Is this air polluted?

Lydia Morauska

This technology has been used in schools in Europe, especially Germany, for at least 10 years, if not more. It has a green, yellow and red traffic light system as well as a CO2 meter. Students and teachers don’t have to look at what concentration is, they look at colors.

Brian Lesnick

And if you see red, you will open a window or something.

Lydia Morauska

Yeah, you know there is a problem. But where there are no windows, you either leave or go to your manager, boss, or anyone and say, “There’s something wrong here.”

[Right now,] If someone asks the restaurant owner, “What is the ventilation here?”, They will probably see them strangely. Therefore, this question should be asked at all levels, especially the government.

Brian Lesnick

Will working on air quality reduce sick leave?

Lydia Morauska

If the chance of infection is low, the infection is low.There is no reason not to [work]..

Brian Lesnick

At the most basic level, what should be the ventilation standards for indoor spaces when it comes to preventing infections?

Lydia Morauska

Most importantly, the purpose of the standard. If you read the purpose of the ASHRAE standard [The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers, which writes standards for building ventilation systems], The purpose does not include infection prevention. Therefore, the most important thing is simply to include infection prevention in the standard objectives.

There are already existing standards and ventilation guidelines, but none of them consider transmission. Therefore, you need to add this.

Brian Lesnick

Are there any countries that are currently aware of this in their indoor air quality standards?

Lydia Morauska

In collaboration with a large group of colleagues around the world, no one has said, “In our country, buildings are designed to handle this.” I can confidently say that this is not taken into account anywhere.

Brian Lesnick

So how do the standards change?

Lydia Morauska

One way is to be normative. This means that each space needs this many. [air] Exchange [exchanges meaning completely replacing the air in the room with fresh air], Or this few liters / person / second. And there are already some recommendations and ideas for this.

However, there are also tools for risk assessment that consider the details of the environment in terms of the number of people and the activities that take place there. This is important. This is because when you sit in the library and breathe quietly, you exhale much less than when you are talking or singing.

Gyms do not have one specific value because they vary in size and number of people.

Brian Lesnick

It costs money to implement this.

Lydia Morauska

The initial investment is expensive, but when you try to evaluate it, it is unmatched compared to the cost of infection.

Brian Lesnick

Are these higher standards flawed? We understand that if we are taking more outside air into a building to ventilate it, we need to use more energy to heat or cool that air. Are you aware that increasing ventilation and addressing these issues can lead to more energy use?

Lydia Morauska

If you are only taking in fresh air, outside air, you need to process it to cool or heat it depending on the climate. This will significantly increase energy consumption. However, there may be hybrid systems that use natural and mechanical ventilation.

The· [already heated or cooled] The air can still be recirculated.Proper filtration is required to remove contaminants [i.e. viruses] It’s very effective in bringing the same air back into the room, but you’re cleaning it.

Brian Lesnick

Is it a shame if you don’t use a pandemic as an instigator to make some of these changes?

Lydia Morauska

I think it’s a tragedy, not a shame. Currently, it is unknown how much life could be saved if the building had a proper ventilation system.

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