Page 38 - spaces4learning, Spring 2021

spaces4learning K-12 COLUMN
HEALTHY AIR MUST FLOW
The risk of failed ventilation can no longer be minimized.
By Kevin Brown
IMAGINE THE HVAC in your facility failing ten or twenty years ago. After the repair bill hit, a decision would be made to avoid that cost in the future, taking operating expenses and asset lifecycles into account. The smart people in the room would try to weigh the human cost of discomfort due to lost temperature and humidity control, but it’s hard without clear numbers. A plan would be made, a consensus built, hands shaken, and things would move forward.
Today, the handshakes may feel like signs of a simpler time, but it is the evaluation of costs that should really concern us.
A very big risk has not been accounted for that is very clear to us now, after the events of 2020. What
was missed?
The Cost of Poorly Maintained Ventilation Systems
The financial impact of a pandemic event like COVID-19 may be incalculable. Before the SARS-CoV-2 virus, however, ex- perts were already working hard to expand our understanding of poor indoor air quality and educate the public about those risks and costs. In fact, indoor air was believed to be a major environmental factor by 1850. The fact that we spend 90% of our time indoors is often cited to give crucial context to the EPA’s finding that certain indoor pollutant levels were 2 to 5 times larger than the concentrations outside.
In our imaginary building ten years ago, there was also a significant rise in sick days the following week. Even if someone connected the rash of colds to the lack of good airflow, that concern did not make it up the chain to the decision makers.
IT MAY BE TIME TO CONSIDER HVAC A MISSION-CRITICAL ASSET.
As our understanding of indoor air quality issues has grown, ASHRAE (the American Society of Heating, Refrigerat- ing and Air-Conditioning Engineers) has set and raised standards for ventilation to protect indoor air and the people who breathe it. Standards help make it clear that a poorly maintained ventilation system can lead to a sub-standard indoor environment, but the costs of those risks depend on the various health impacts
The truth is, building owners and
operators are very well-practiced at
accounting for the cost of repairing or replacing a failed piece of equipment. Failed ventilation itself, on the other hand, has many more risks that owners and operators are less practiced at accounting for—but that should no longer be left off the list. And while the discomfort of poor temperature control has real impacts on performance, when the HVAC goes down, buildings lose more than temperature control. Lack of airflow and humidity control can both lead to increased exposure to pollutants and pathogens.
studied. One study cites the annual cost of care for upper and lower respiratory tract infections at $36 billion and the cost of lost work at $34 billion. The same study found that 23% of office workers reported symptoms of sick-building syndrome improved away from their work environments—and calculates the cost of sick-building syndrome to businesses nationwide at $60 billion.
Another way of looking at the cost of indoor air quality is the opportunity lost: The benefits of improved indoor environments have been calculated to be 18 to 47 times greater than the costs.
38 SPRING 2021 | spaces4learning.com