The buildings and indoor environments we use every day can have an impact on our health. Building design, layout, and the facilities available can all affect the freshness of the air, as well as factors including:
- Space/crowding
- Noise
- Temperature
- Light
It is important to keep the ‘lungs’ of our buildings healthy so they can keep us healthy too.
Illness:
Illnesses can be easily passed between people either from contaminated surfaces or through the air when people with infections talk, cough, or sneeze. When people gather in indoor spaces pollutants can build up making the environment unhealthy; unless action is taken buildings become susceptible to stagnant air, where infectious diseases and carbon dioxide can make the indoor air more polluted than the air outside and infections can be passed from person to person more easily.
Risk:
Reducing the risk of infections and other health conditions requires both management of indoor spaces and the air in them, including regular cleaning and effective ventilation. It can be easier to see when physical surfaces are unclean, but air quality is often invisible and poorly understood, so risks are too often unmanaged until there is a problem.
Health:
Effective ventilation is essential to protecting public health – buildings need to be able to “breathe” and get a supply of fresh air. Preventing the spread of infections in the first place is better than trying to manage illness, and people should be able to have confidence that the air in the buildings they use is safe to breathe.
You wouldn't want to drink dirty water so neither should you want to breathe in dirty air!
You wouldn't want to drink dirty water so neither should you want to breathe in dirty air!
Why does ventilation matter to me?
Fresh air is important for health, not only to reduce exposure to airborne disease, but to ensure we are getting enough oxygen to support our health. People spend onaverage 80%of their time indoors, more so during the colder winter months, and good ventilation can significantly reduce exposure to diseases. Spending time in poorly ventilated spaces can cause reactions due to reduced oxygen levels such as:
- Headaches
- Tiredness
- Lower concentration levels
From:
Ventilation matters - why clean air is vital to health
To read more click on this link: https://explainers.raeng.org.uk/ventilation-matters
