Monitoring the air quality standards in your facility is important for many reasons, whether the facility in question is an office, warehouse, school, gym, medical facility, entertainment venue, or other. The obvious answer for now and the foreseeable future is to keep a close eye on the presence of harmful airborne viruses such as COVID-19.
As life returns to normal little by little, with employees returning to offices, blue collar workers to warehouses and the likes, physically active people to gyms, students to schools, and the entertainment industry getting back on its feet, monitoring the air quality inside such facilities is critical. Here’s why:
Air Quality Standards: The Health of Your Employees (and Yourself)
The health and wellness of yourself and your employees is the most important reason for monitoring the air quality inside your facility, especially those individuals who have pre-existing conditions that put them at a heightened risk. Medical experts have weighed in on the importance of monitoring air quality in confined spaces.
Dr. Robert L. Murphy of Northwestern University states that the two primary sources of transmission of the COVID-19 virus, “include person-to-person spread by respiratory droplets and when the virus becomes aerosolized.” Read more on the expert opinion of Dr. Murphy and others on the fourth page of this infographic.
Air Quality Standards: Avoiding Interruption of Business Operations Due to COVID-19 Protocols
The second most important reason to monitor your facility’s air is to avoid the closure or interruption of your business operations due to violation of COVID-19 protocols, as well as the hefty penalties and fines that are issued as a result. Monitoring your facility’s air quality is a way to stay one or two steps ahead of such a fate.
A study conducted at the University of Chicago is showing promise on how monitoring air quality will improve preventative measures and protocols. Dr. Jayan Pinto, who leads the study, said in a recent interview that sampling the air around COVID-19 positive patients has helped understand how airborne viruses spread, and that the results of the study are replicable in real-world scenarios.
Air Quality Standards: Available Solutions
COVID-19 has caused the acceleration of innovations in air monitoring technology, which makes sense. Such technologies, such as AirAnswers, which has developed a “plug and play” device specifically designed to sample your facility’s air quality, offer effective solutions to the needs of facility managers looking to, “return to the new normal.”
We’ve partnered with AirAnswers, who provide a small, silent device that only needs to be plugged in and to run for three days before being sent back to its lab for testing and reports. The technology is unique in that it utilizes ion particles to generate air flow, allowing 150 liters of air per minute to be circulated and collected through the device. Its capabilities include collecting ultrafine particles of about 0.01 um (micrometer) including allergens, molds, bacteria, and viruses, with COVID-19 highlighting the list of those viruses.
