The Building Engineering Services Association (BESA) has updated technical guidance designed to help building managers improve the health, well-being, and productivity of occupants.
BESA has revised Guide to Good Practice: Indoor Air Quality for Health & Well-being’ (H&W002) to reflect tougher targets set by the World Health Organisation (WHO), which revised its own air quality advice last year. It also follows BESA’s call for the UK to “be more ambitious” with proposed national air quality standards due to come into law this year.
The revised guidance has been completed in time for National Clean Air Day 2022 on 16th June.
BESA’s Head of Technical Graeme Fox said: “The pandemic has raised the profile of the role IAQ plays in human health and well-being, but there is still a lack of understanding about how that can be translated into practical measures like improving building ventilation and filtration.
“It is also important that the industry is following the latest scientific research on this critical life safety issue, which is why we have brought our guidance into line with the WHO’s advice.”
The WHO slashed its recommended maximum levels for several pollutants, including particulate matter (PM) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) saying there was “clear evidence” that air pollution harmed human health “at even lower concentrations than previously understood”.
It advised its 194 member countries to consider air pollution to be as big a threat to human health and well-being as climate change. It said its updated guidance was the product of five years of reviews carried out by dozens of scientists, who looked at over 500 separate studies.
As a result, it adjusted almost all of its previous maximum target levels for airborne pollutants downwards. It linked long-term exposure to even relatively low concentrations of ambient and household air pollution to lung cancer, heart disease, and strokes – putting the health impact of pollution on a par with poor diet and smoking while making it a bigger killer than car crashes.
BESA’s guidance focuses on practical measures to tackle the specific challenge of reducing airborne contaminants inside buildings. It points out that, as people spend more than 90% of their time indoors, it is increasingly urgent that more time and money is spent on addressing IAQ.
As well as setting more ambitious targets for reducing general pollution, BESA believes the government should set specific targets for IAQ so that buildings can become ‘safe havens’ that protect occupants while the longer-term work of cleaning up the external environment goes on.
The updated guide H&W002 is one of three pieces of free guidance produced by BESA since the start of the pandemic. It is encouraging the Government to use these resources to set legally binding performance standards including safe ventilation rates and lower threshold levels for specific pollutants.
