"For decades, the focus of architects and building engineers was on thermal comfort, odour control, perceived air quality, initial investment cost, energy use, and other performance issues, while infection control was neglected," Professor Morawska said. Professor Morawska said ventilation systems should also be demand-controlled to adjust for different room occupancies, and differing activities and breathing rates, such as exercising in a gym versus sitting in a movie theatre. QUT air-quality expert Distinguished Professor Lidia Morawska is leading an international call for a "paradigm shift" in combating airborne pathogens such as COVID-19. "Ventilation systems with higher airflow rates and which distribute clean, disinfected air so that it reaches the breathing zone of occupants must be demand controlled and thus be flexible." ![]() ![]() "Most minimum ventilation standards outside of specialised health care and research facilities only control for odour, CO 2 levels, temperature and humidity. "We've provided strong evidence that airborne transmission spreads infections, so there should be international ventilation standards that control pathogens," she said. Professor Morawska said response efforts to combat airborne viruses were too weak because airborne infections were harder to trace than food or waterborne outbreaks. "Mandated building ventilation standards need to include higher airflow, filtration and disinfection rates, and monitors that allowed the public to observe the quality of air around them. "We need to establish the foundations to ensure that the air in our buildings is clean with a significantly reduced pathogen count, contributing to the building occupants' health, just as we expect for the water coming out of our taps," Professor Morawska said. Professor Morawska, director of QUT's International Laboratory for Air Quality and Health, said there needed to be a shift in the perception that we could not afford the cost of control, given the globally monthly harm from COVID-19 had been conservatively estimated as $1 trillion and the cost of influenza in the US alone exceeded $11.2 billion annually. The international group of air quality researchers called on the World Health Organisation to extend the indoor air quality guidelines to include airborne pathogens and to recognise the need to control hazards of airborne transmission of respiratory infections. Professor Morawska led a group of almost 40 researchers from 14 countries in a call published in Science for a shift in standards in ventilation requirements equal in scale to the transformation in the 1800s when cities started organising clean water supplies and centralised sewage systems.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |