Monitor your IAQ management plan to avoid unintended health consequences
April 1, 2024
While we manage IAQ to decrease exposure to airborne pathogens, such as SARS-CoV-2, we need to be extremely careful to avoid IAQ management that has the unintended consequence of suppressing our immune system, making us more vulnerable to infections, inflammatory diseases, and cancer.
With increased air filtration to a minimum of MERV 13, increased outdoor ventilations, and the required 6 ACH, a safe workplace environment for people can be achieved.
Engineered Infection Prevention mitigation strategies usually include dilution (ventilation), filtration, humidification, and air cleaning and disinfection.
Antibiotics, antiseptics, high-frequency light waves, and oxygen radicals have saved many lives. We must use them selectively and for limited time periods, being fully aware of the ability of microbes to fight back with resistance.
As scientists continue to study ways the coronavirus can be spread, one question involves aerosol droplets that people exhale while breathing. Can those droplets circulate in the air long enough to be picked up by a ventilation system and recirculated through building ducts? There has not been a clear answer.