The Balance Between Industry Profits and Human Health Protection
How can infectious and noninfectious diseases that spread through the air, are not fully controlled by individual behaviors, and affect “innocent bystanders” be contained to protect the health of the general public?
Managing IAQ for occupant health is essential for our personal wellbeing, productivity, and national economy. Despite the importance of good IAQ, standards have often been influenced by shortsighted, profit-driven industries that deny or attack the validity of medical data. In many ways, conflicts in managing IAQ represent a microcosm for a much broader question: Will people respect scientific studies that guide the containment of harmful airborne compounds, both infectious and noninfectious, if the measures challenge industry profits? The answer to this question is not yet clear.
Documented controversies around airborne transmission of infectious disease date back to the 1500’s, when physicians wrote about new evidence of “effluvia that polluted the air around patients.” Soon, medical treatises added the category of “volatile contagions” for diseases that spread without direct contact. This idea of volatile contagions not only destabilized preexisting epidemiological theories but was accompanied by fear that had a near-paralyzing effect on the general public. Consequently, health officials and medical experts became reluctant to endorse the idea. Physicians, with little to offer against the danger of volatile contagions, also underplayed the role of airborne transmission. Acrimonious disputes about the spread of influenza, tuberculosis, and smallpox continued throughout the 19th century with the debates eventually becoming political. The faction believing in airborne transmission, called liberals, demanded environmental containment. Conversely, the faction considered conservative argued that broad restrictions were evidence of bureaucratic oppression and insisted that behavioral interventions, such as quarantines, would solve the problem while protecting individual freedom.