As business owners, we are responsible for the environment in our workplace. Daily operations and productivity depend on a healthy workforce, but all too often this is not the case. According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), poor indoor air quality (IAQ) has been linked to headaches, fatigue, difficulty concentrating, and irritation of the eyes, nose, throat, and lungs.
There are many factors that affect IAQ. They include poor ventilation (lack of outside air), problems controlling temperature and humidity, as well as remodeling and other activities that can affect the fresh air entering the building. In some cases, pollutants such as construction or renovation dust, mold, cleaning products, pesticides, or other chemicals in the air can cause poor IAQ.
As if that weren’t enough, certain diseases like asthma have been linked to specific pollutants in the air or indoor environments. Also, substances like asbestos and radon do not cause immediate symptoms, but they can cause cancer after many years of exposure.
Poor IAQ has a dramatic impact on health and the economy
Poor IAQ is a major health problem. exist 4.5 million Annual visits to the emergency room for sensitive / environmentally sensitive illnesses. These ER treatments represent more $ 20 billion in health care costs every year in the US And that doesn’t even include lost wages for an employee or lost productivity for the employer.
When you add the cost of health care, lost wages, and lost productivity, the annual cost of environmental illness is greater than EPA and OSHA budgets. set. This is more than we spend as a nation for these agencies to regulate and monitor work environments!
To do? First, look at the symptoms
People who work in buildings with poor IAQ may notice unpleasant or musty odors or may feel that the building is hot and congested. There are also the symptoms mentioned above such as headaches, fatigue, irritations of the eyes, nose, throat, but also others such as fever and shortness of breath.
Optimizing IAQ is the only real answer, but how?
But not all exposures cause symptoms, so there is no substitute for good building management. This brings us to point two.
The employer must update the company’s HVAC system. You should consider installing an automatic fan controller. As the name suggests, modern “controllers” are revolutionizing the HVAC industry by controlling or linking every aspect of the HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) system for maximum efficiency. This efficiency is imperative as you cannot fix OAQ (outside air quality) but rather a can optimize IAQ.
Without proper ventilation, defined as the exchange of indoor and outdoor air, pollutants such as radon, formaldehyde, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and other pollutants can accumulate. indoors, leading to potentially serious health problems like those listed earlier in this article. This can be especially true in small commercial businesses that have a lot of harmful chemicals in the air. A small nail salon would be just one example.
How do they work? SMART ventilation controllers connect to the duct system and use indoor and outdoor sensors to automatically shut off the air conditioner when humidity is low and temperatures are comfortable, bringing in cool, cool air while expelling bad air with its pollutants abroad. Unlike older indoor air ventilation systems such as bar fume extractors and ASHRE fans in homes and small businesses, SMART ventilation controllers only discharge indoor air with outdoor air when the outdoor air quality ( OAQ) is better than IAQ. Basically, with a SMART ventilation controller, IAQ is addressed 24/7.
Resume
It is true that SMART ventilation controllers are not inexpensive. There are other less expensive upgrades that will help improve the IAQ, such as changing the air conditioning filters regularly and other options described in other articles in this series.
However, when you consider the financial drain that a bad IAQ is having on the economy and people’s health, a next-generation SMART ventilation controller is an investment that can be expected to pay off over time. Also, isn’t the health of your employees worth it?