Page 26 - College Planning & Management, October 2017

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A REVIEW COURSE ON INDOOR AIR QUALITY
26 COLLEGE PLANNING & MANAGEMENT / OCTOBER 2017
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Tiny, Invisible Particles?
Tiny invisible particles? Come on. Yes. As it turns out, virtually everything inside a room emits tiny, invisible particles. Emit- ters include the materials used to construct the building; the furnishings, such as the desks, blackboards and even the chalk
(or the whiteboards and markers) — all are contaminating the air with emitted particles.
And there’s more. When the occupants of a room move around, they stir up these particles and send them into the air, mak- ing them easier to breathe in. Occupants also add more particles to the air — as they move around, their clothing, bodies and hair shed particles.
Particle shedding by objects and by people is called off-gassing, and breath- ing in off-gasses causes people to grow fatigued.
Anyone who has painted a room knows about off-gassing. It takes a couple days for the off-gas paint smell to go away. Unfortu- nately, what most of us never knew is that off-gassing is continuous. It never stops, and we cannot tell that it is there.
“While the odor may go away, off- gassing does not stop,” says Nick Agopian, vice president, sales and marketing, with RenewAire, LLC, a Soler Palau company. “Off-gassing contaminants are generated
internally by the construction materials used to build the building as well as by the furnishings in the building.”
Furnishings include desks, chairs, curtains... all of the elements that fill out the interior of a building.
“Even more important are the occu- pants of the building and the activities they engage in,” continues Agopian. “For ex- ample, when people get up in the morning, they shower, shampoo and condition their hair. Most of the men shave. By the time they are finished, they have over 80 differ- ent chemicals on their bodies, all of them off-gassing. In addition, their clothing off gasses — from the materials themselves
as well as from the detergents and fabric softeners used to launder the clothing.”
According to the University of Colorado Environmental Center, additional sources of off-gassing particles include mold and mildew, poorly maintained HVAC systems, chemical cleaners, non-HEPA vacuum cleaners, smoking in and near buildings, vehicle exhaust entering buildings and laboratory chemicals.
Humidity or moisture in indoor air exacerbates existing IAQ problems. It facilitates both the growth and spread of mold and mildew and the off-gassing of the structural components of a building.
How do you detect these problems? “In
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