The Building Engineering Services Association (BESA) has produced a guide to Indoor Air Quality for Health & Well-Being, which is designed to help building owners, managers and engineers interpret IAQ data and turn it into useful strategies for improving the indoor environment.
The UK’s chief scientific officer Sir Patrick Vallance and the British Medical Association (BMA) have emphasised the role of building ventilation and IAQ in helping the country navigate the next stage of the pandemic. The BSI is also fast-tracking a new British Standard that will help to define the UK’s future approach to IAQ.
The BMA, which represents all UK doctors, says setting legal standards for ventilation, should be part of the government’s strategy for dealing with the next stage of the pandemic. It added that financial support for businesses and educational settings should be made available “to implement these requirements ahead of the autumn and winter period, when respiratory viruses spread more easily and buildings must be kept warm, limiting options for natural ventilation”.
The new BESA guidance, which is part of its Buildings as Safe Havens (BASH) campaign, sets out target limits for a range of airborne contaminants in a variety of indoor spaces. It explains how air quality data gathered during specialist surveys or from the wide range of low cost real-time and continuous IAQ monitoring devices, can be interpreted and acted upon.
The guidance can be downloaded for free here.
