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The technical, legislative, and ethical considerations of healthy indoor air
Dr Iyad Al Attar, an independent air filtration consultant, reflects on the complex nature of indoor air quality (IAQ) and the critical considerations needed to support more inclusive, holistic, and sustainable practices related to IAQ.
Indoor Air Quality
For Dr Iyad Al Attar, any conversation on healthy buildings must start with establishing metrics through which they are defined. “If we just focus on particle capture or dust, I think the definition of a healthy building will be narrowed down, and many buildings will be qualified for this. We need to consider all the pollutants that will trigger potential asthma attacks and health issues, whether in the short- or long-term and address them by striving for the best indoor air quality, not just an acceptable one.”
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Ventilation and filtration systems lie at the heart of any healthy building. Because you cannot facilitate the delivery of fresh and clean air without a functional ventilation and filtration system. As such, it is imperative to ensure the sustainable performance of ventilation and filtration systems and guarantee that they will be designed, built, operated, and maintained appropriately.
Dr Iyad al Attar
This issue is especially critical to providing sustainable clean air and efficiently delivering it to vital institutions such as hospitals or schools, many of which have been given a free ride to supply any air quality they deem appropriate.
Three key components
Dr Al Attar highlights three key components that all stakeholders need to consider to move towards better and more sustainable IAQ practices. “The first is technical,” he explains. “Technology and innovations are now widely available at humanity's fingertips. Many in the market offer specific high filtration efficiency to the required level without impacting energy efficiency, tweaking ventilation rates, or measuring by a person or square meter.”
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The second component Dr Al Attar highlights is legislative, which is getting the government to play a part in and govern the performance of ventilation and filtration systems. “We need the government to come and support it by providing an engine of policy for air quality generation and providing incentives,” he says. “This can be in the form of tax credits or rebates and getting the banks involved by providing, for example, interest-free loans for those who cannot afford to invest in retrofitting for better IAQ.”
The third, for Dr Al Attar, is an ethical consideration and obligation of stakeholders. “I appeal to facility management and decision-makers to come to the same design table and consider air quality as another pillar of the design. Because we need more functional ventilation and filtration systems, and we can no longer run the next 20 years the way we've run the past 20.”
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Unlocking opportunities
Integrating these three components can unlock many opportunities. Dr. Al Attar illustrates this with an example of implementing reliable, affordable, and continuous air quality monitoring. By gathering the data and providing it to the authorities, he emphasises, “You cannot change what you cannot measure.”
Under such a mechanism, Dr Al Attar explains that if a school, in collaboration with the municipality and the Ministry of Education, establishes a system to ensure their facilities meet air quality standards, they can maintain their certification to operate. If the standards are not met, support will be provided to achieve compliance. He asserts, “It’s unethical to allow schools to cluster students in classrooms without fresh and clean air.” Ultimately, this approach will lead to developing mechanisms and policies that promote adherence to new guidelines. Governments can then introduce incentive programmes to encourage compliance with these enhanced standards.
Rethinking standards, supporting inclusivity
Having such a holistic approach is crucial, says Dr Al Attar, because, while there are standards in place, there are gaps when it comes to practices in the market. “We always seem to reconfigure the standards and tweak these standards when we have a pandemic or a wildfire,” he says. “These times are not the ideal time to start reconfiguring the specs of air quality. What we really need is relevant standards, abiding by new metrics, and widening the scope of air quality to include more than CO2 and more than particulate matter and bioaerosols, gases, and contaminants.”
Also, Dr Al Attar says the focus should not be only on CO2 particulates or humidity. “We need to have a much greater scope of air quality entailing all these parameters. Remember that your air filter performance might behave differently if you have more than one pollutant. The research is not very well-established regarding exposure to more than one pollutant, whether in terms of an air filter or a respiratory system. So, there are engineering and medical aspects that should be investigated.”
Overall, Dr Al Attar believes there is a need to re-examine the entire business model of how we are bringing air indoors, go beyond thermal comfort, and look at bioaerosols and infection control. “We have what it takes. It's not utopian. It's just a matter of getting the mindset at the same table and acknowledging that air quality beats in the heart of every room in the building.
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COVID-19
Speaking on the slowdown in attention to the topic following COVID-19, Dr Iyad says the pandemic was treated as a business opportunity to propel products. “We've experienced filtration delirium where everybody went to upgrade filters almost blindly without engineering the change in the requirements that would render using a HEPA filter actually feasible.” He says we have not been doing our air quality homework for the past five decades. The pandemic has also asked us different air quality questions, which we cannot answer. “Air quality research has been underfunded for years, since the 70s and 80s, and people who were supposed to lead left the meeting room. And then, when the pandemic came about, we had to flee rather than fight.”
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This is critical because scientists have proven that the pandemic is not necessarily a once-in-a-lifetime experience. “It’s naïve to think it is. It’s also naïve to believe that the pandemic is over,” he says. “It's just that less spotlight has been put on the pandemic now. We don't know what the COVID-19 cases are actually doing. We are back to normal. But we should propel an efficient system process to make healthy buildings accessible and affordable to everyone.” For Dr Al Attar, healthy buildings are those that are sustainable, with ventilation and filtration systems that are able to ascend the air quality heights, act smarter and respond faster to variations in human occupancy, pollutant variation, and any other challenges the indoor building can encounter.
More than a technology discussion
Dr Al Attar understands, however, that there are ongoing discussions about choosing the right technologies to support such a vision, touching on the conversations on using air cleaner compared to fresh air ventilation. “We may all agree that we need to change, but we differ on how change should occur,” he says. “If I have insufficient filtration, the system will bring in many pollutants of different concentrations in different size distributions, and they will swim in the air. Now, having an air cleaner may help by trying to capture this, but it's not where the essence of healthy buildings lies. It's about making sure we know what we are addressing. Are we addressing textbook ventilation and filtration systems? Or are we trying to do sorts of aftermath measures to help tweak systems that aren't working? It boils down to having healthy and functional systems engineered for the change.”
We may all agree that we need to change, but we differ on how change should occur. If I have insufficient filtration, the system will bring in many pollutants of different concentrations in different size distributions, and they will swim in the air.
Now, having an air cleaner may help by trying to capture this, but it's not where the essence of healthy buildings lies. It's about making sure we know what we are addressing. Are we addressing textbook ventilation and filtration systems? Or are we trying to do sorts of aftermath measures to help tweak systems that aren't working? It boils down to having healthy and functional systems engineered for the change.
He says stakeholders need to respond, not react to the pollutants, citing that a part is looking at what is indoor and outdoor, examining the geographic location to consider the challenges and identify the best solution. “It’s about doing your filtration homework. Running for over-the-counter solutions will not work. It has not worked. We need to engineer change to induce it.”
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Dr Al Attar also pierces through the misconceptions that clean indoor air and high energy efficiency are not mutually exclusive. “It’s not impossible, but it is challenging when you don't have a system that is operating well, when you have dust-loaded heating and cooling coils when dust and pollutants penetrate through your ducts and diffusers and eventually our respiratory systems, and when you must entertain coil cleaning, duct cleaning, and coil washing. Of course, you must add this to the bill, but the bill that can come due is losing moms, dads, and loved ones due to malfunctioning systems or hiccups and systems that we have been unable to operate and maintain well. Keep in mind that it's not enough to design and build systems that will work well. We also want them to work sustainably because if they age very quickly, you know, you won't get the outcome you're looking for.”