Inject a Pulse Into Your Building Monitoring System
If we added living tissue models to existing building monitoring systems, we could potentially save many years of human suffering, lost lives, and health care dollars.
We are in a new era — a time of increased realization that the indoor environment has a powerful influence on human health. This means that decisions made by architects, engineers, builders, and facility managers impact us in areas that are outside of our current set of building metrics. Building codes mandate protection from instantaneous or catastrophic emergencies, such as earthquakes, fires, or building flooding. While we also monitor and manage energy consumption, emissions from carbon-containing fuel, and indoor temperatures, we are missing many other less obvious yet important considerations.
Surprising data from new building assessment tools are showing compelling connections between occupant illnesses, synthetic surface materials, and low indoor humidity. These associations are not due to off-gassing of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) but rather are due to direct effects of inadequate water vapor on living building occupants. This includes humans, of course, but also indoor communities of microbes known as building microbiome. Microbes are initially brought into a building by people, pets, outdoor air, plants, and soil. They then respond to indoor conditions and evolve, as needed, to survive, or they die. Surviving and morphed microbes, excessively low indoor humidity, and tiny airborne particles are some of the indoor factors that directly affect the health of people who spend more than around 15 minutes indoors. Clearly, building monitoring systems that focus on energy consumption will not adequately inform us about indoor factors that affect the building microbiome and human occupants.