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Total overhaul of indoor air quality needed post-pandemic, experts warn
By Stuart Layt
Combating COVID-19 and future pandemics will require a complete overhaul of indoor air quality standards, an international group of researchers says.
Queensland University of Technology air quality expert Lidia Morawska has led a group of nearly 40 researchers from 14 countries calling for a change in thinking around air quality in the wake of the pandemic.
QUT air-quality expert Distinguished Professor Lidia Morawska is leading calls for global indoor air quality standards.Credit: QUT
They are specifically calling for the World Health Organisation to extend its indoor air quality guidelines to include airborne pathogens, and officially recognise the need to control airborne transmission of respiratory infections.
Professor Morawska, who is the director of QUT’s International Laboratory for Air Quality and Health, said there needed to be a “paradigm shift” in the way we deal with air quality in buildings, especially in offices and workplaces.
“In the 1800s there was a paradigm shift in thinking around clean water – countries moved to ensure clean drinking water and public health leaped forward as a result,” she said.
“We need to think of clean air in the same way, we should have virus-free air indoors.”
Professor Morawska said in addition to public health, economies have been hit hard by the pandemic, with the global cost of pandemic impacts estimated at $1 trillion every month.
However, the ongoing costs to economies also pile up just from the regular flu season, with the US alone experiencing over $11 billion in related impact every year.
“We have all learned to live with this annual spread of disease, but what we are trying to explain is that this shouldn’t be normal, we can do things to halt this,” she said.
Professor Morawska said they are specifically calling for global guidelines around minimum ventilation standards outside of specialised health care and research facilities.
She said building ventilation systems should also be able to be adjusted to account for different room uses, from people sitting quietly in a movie theatre to people breathing hard in a gym.
“Early in the pandemic we had a lot of restrictions around preventing people from gathering in crowded places which were poorly ventilated,” she said.
“Most people picture a bar in that case, but in some cases three people in an office is crowded and poorly ventilated in terms of air quality.”
The calls come after the WHO announced new guidelines this week around the airborne spread of COVID-19, after holding off on updating its advice despite mounting scientific evidence the disease has airborne spread.
Professor Morawska was one of the leading proponents of the theory that COVID-19 has airborne spread, publishing a call last year for the WHO to update its guidelines to acknowledge that source of infection.
She said she was happy the WHO had finally officially moved on the issue, but added that the push for better air quality for everyone extended beyond the current pandemic.
“The memories of pandemics always fade, but pandemics always change the world, in big and small ways,” she said.
“We hope this pandemic leads to genuine change on this issue, for the sake of everyone’s health.”