Covid gives us a chance to fix indoor air pollution forever

The pandemic taught us the benefits of ventilation in stopping the spread of the virus. But keeping our indoor air clean has plenty of other benefits.

By Grace Browne, WIRED UK

Germans love fresh air. The people of Germany love it so much that they have a name for the act of airing out a room: Lüften. It’s been called a national obsession: they’re known to throw open windows multiple times a day even in the dead of winter. And if we take anything from the past year-and-a-half, it’s that the rest of the world could stand to take a leaf out of Germany’s books, and crack open our windows too.

While the early days of the pandemic were spent frantically sanitizing surfaces and constantly washing our hands, the scientific consensus eventually settled on the fact that Sars-CoV-2 was airborne, and the focus shifted to proper ventilation to reduce its spread.

But some scientists argue that we shouldn’t stop with those efforts when the threat of Covid-19 dissipates. Many have been clamoring for years that poor indoor air quality has been having massive detrimental effects on our health and productivity. And the pandemic may be the tide change. “It feels like The Great Awakening,” says Joseph Allen, director of the Healthy Buildings program at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “Finally, the world has woken up to the importance of healthy buildings.”

We spend almost all our lives indoors – about 90 per cent, in fact. Take your age, multiply it 0.9, and that’s your indoor age, or how many years you’ve lived indoors. So the quality of the air you’re inhaling is pretty important. But for the most part, that quality tends to be poor. Indoor air can be packed full of harmful pollutants, which make us sick and hamper our productivity. “It’s influencing us constantly; I just don’t think people have thought much about it. And then when Covid hit, I think it opened a lot of eyes,” says Allen. Read More

Source: Wired UK

Concerned about your indoor air quality in your home, school or office?  Click Here to learn more about lüft® Plug-in Indoor Air  Quality and Radon Monitor.