Building engineers must tackle world’s ‘biggest silent killer’

“When you combine all the other diseases, you see that the mortality rates are not the same as for poor air quality diseases,” Webb said. “Government intervention tends to focus on ambient or outdoor air quality … but very little attention has been paid to the real risks of exposure to our populations.”

The BESA podcast highlighted the fact that Western societies tend to spend more than 90% of their time indoors, making indoor environmental quality (IEQ) the most important factor in exposure to contaminated air.

“Therefore, building and facility management systems have tremendous potential to improve the overall health and well-being of populations,” Webb said. “If we can design better buildings, we will ultimately improve the health and well-being of our populations.”

He called for a different mindset, focused on the average 60-year lifespan of a building, in order to preserve the well-being of future generations.

Webb said legislation and legal requirements would play a role, but human behaviour could have the biggest impact. Improving the way IEQ is measured and monitored would give people the information they need to make informed choices – and allow owners to “market” their buildings as healthier, giving them a return on any investment in improved engineering systems such as ventilation, air filtration and controls.

However, this would also require a major improvement in the level of sensor technologies currently in use, according to the podcast.

Health & Wellbeing 360 has been heavily involved in the development of the new British Standard 40102 (Part 1) which defines the parameters for measuring and measuring IEQ and provides benchmarks for solving ventilation and filtration issues.

“It describes how to use advanced digital technologies, such as artificial intelligence, to tell a building not to open the windows because the outdoor monitor indicates that there are high levels of PM2.5 and nitric oxide pollution,” Webb explained.

“The BMS system will come into play. It will ventilate, purify and bring the air back to levels that meet the standard. It is this advancement of combining different technologies and smarter systems that I think is the future of buildings in the next five to ten years.”

He added that just as people have become accustomed to weather reports that provide advice on temperature, humidity and pollen levels that can impact their health, they should have access to real-time IEQ information every time they enter a building.

“You should be able to choose where you go… whether you go into this building or another one.”

This could also lead to a significant reduction in sickness and absenteeism rates by ensuring building users are less exposed to unsafe conditions. The NHS currently suffers from an absenteeism rate of almost 8%, which could have a profound impact on productivity and recruitment needs.

“Rather than recruiting and training more professionals for the NHS, it would probably be better to create a better environment for them so they don’t get sick when they go to work? That gets more people back to work than you could ever employ and train in a short space of time,” Webb told the BESA podcast.

The industry also needs to ensure that even as the quality of indoor air quality monitoring improves, it does not become excessively costly.

“We need inexpensive, reliable sensors that can be deployed at scale,” Webb said. “Some sensors are very sensitive, very specific, but they cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. No one can afford to put these types of level sensors in buildings at scale. We’re looking at trying to deploy them at scale in all buildings.”

He said it would be possible to meet the requirements of the new British standard with sensors costing around £400 to £600, but they must be able to accurately measure air quality concentrations.

“We don’t want people to invest in sensors that do a calculation based on voltages that don’t actually measure concentrations. We think they’re not very reliable. In the industry we’re in, poor data and poor information leads to poor quality (and therefore massive mortality rates).”

He said the industry needed to ask itself some fundamental questions: why are you building buildings in the first place? Are you building them in a way that will avoid you being sued for poor design? Or are you building a good quality building… and what’s the price difference?

“The difference between building a poor quality building and a good quality building is negligible, especially when you consider some of the suggestions we make about integrating technology into the building infrastructure,” he added.

“The commercial driver of this initiative will be people’s desire to have better living conditions for themselves and their families. There’s the legislative side of it, which is to make it happen, and then there’s the competitive side of it, which is to see whether people can gain a competitive advantage, which affects the price they charge to sell environmental quality to the people who use their services,” Webb explained.

The podcast revealed that several hotel chains are already looking to improve their ratings by announcing that their rooms provide instant IEQ updates to occupants using the latest monitoring technology.

Webb also said that the net-zero emissions goal should not mean ending up with a “hermetically sealed, high-performance box that is horrible to be in as a human being.”

“I don’t think it’s a big step forward. I think it’s possible to train people to think differently when they design buildings… and then to install and develop the installation of new technologies in buildings,” he told the BESA podcast.