There should be mandatory indoor air quality standards, say an international group of experts led by Professor Lidia Morawska .
Professor Morawska, Vice-Chancellor Fellow at the University of Surrey and Distinguished Professor at Queensland University of Technology, led the appeal to the World Health Organization to recognise the airborne transmission of the virus which causes COVID-19 early in the pandemic – and help minimise it.
Now, in a paper published by the prestigious journal Science, Professor Morawska's international team recommends setting standards for ventilation rate and three key indoor pollutants: carbon dioxide (CO2), carbon monoxide (CO) and PM2.5, which are particles so small they can lodge deep in the lungs and enter the bloodstream.
Professor Morawska said:
People living in urban and industrialised societies spend more than 90% of their time indoors, yet there are few controls over the quality of the air they breathe there.
Professor Prashant Kumar , co-author of the paper and Director of the University of Surrey's Global Centre for Clean Air Research (GCARE) , said:
Professor Catherine Noakes , Professor of Environmental Engineering for Buildings at the University of Leeds, said:
The paper ‘Indoor air quality standards in public buildings’ is published in Science.
This research demonstrates the University of Surrey’s contribution to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). These include SDG 3 (Good Health and Wellbeing) and SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities).
Science
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Mandating indoor air quality for public buildings
29-Mar-2024
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This paper was supported by the Australian Research Council (ARC) Industrial Transformation Training Centre (IC220100012) and ARC Laureate Fellowship (FL220100082). The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) funded the CO-TRACE project (grant EP/W001411/1), UK Research and Innovation [EPSRC, Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC)] funded the RECLAIM Network Plus project (grant EP/W034034/1), and NERC funded the GreenCities project (grant NE/X002799/1)