Page 25 - College Planning & Management, October 2017

Facilities CAMPUS SPACES
A Review Course on Indoor Air Quality
If you graded the indoor air in your buildings, would it pass or fail?
BY MICHAEL FICKES
WHAT HAPPENED TO THAT GREAT HISTORY course you offered last year? Semester after semes- ter, your students have always been fascinated by
the lectures in that course. This year, though, students and lectur- ers alike are coughing and sniffling. Many are also yawning and laboring to stay awake. What’s going on?
Students typically feel sick or sleepy in class because they didn’t get enough sleep the night before. This young man stayed up to watch Jimmy Fallon with his roommates last night. That young woman is on her own for the first time, and she is having a blast — until all hours of the night. That’s what young people do when they get to college.
Then again, there are other explanations for classroom fatigue. It might be that the air inside the dormitories and classroom buildings is dirty. In technical terms, the problem might be poor indoor air quality, or IAQ.
The air in the classroom is putting people to sleep? How could that happen? The answer sounds more like horror fiction than science. But it has been scientifically proven that in buildings that seem to make occupants tired or ill there are tiny invisible par- ticles, unaffected by gravity, floating in the air. Building occupants breathe that air and take the particles into their lungs. The impuri- ties adversely affect their breathing and wakefulness.
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PHOTO © VOLKOVSLAVA