It’s Time for Companies to Monitor Workplace Air Quality
It’s Time for Companies to Monitor Workplace Air Quality This article was written by: Joseph G. Allen Original article – https://hbr.org/2023/11/its-time-for-companies-to-monitor-workplace-air-quality When the Canadian wildfire smoke hit New York City in June, I got a call from a senior executive with a pressing question: was the air inside their company’s building safe for employees to breathe? I could confidently answer yes thanks to the indoor air quality sensor system I’d helped them deploy several months before. According to the real-time data, particle levels were below the health-based limits even as outdoor levels surged to more than 400 ug/m3 — levels that we know is associated with not only headaches and eye irritation but also heart attacks and hospitalizations. A similar thing happened just the other week when a fellow professor at the Harvard School of Public Health pinged me with concerns about air flow and Covid-19 risk in their classroom. Because we’d installed similar air quality sensors, I was able to quickly see and share that the space exceeded the ventilation targets we had set for Covid. We’ve now rolled out similar sensor networks at Harvard Business School and in the Harvard University Health Clinics. The movement toward real-time air quality monitoring is growing. Both Denver’s and Boston’s public school systems have put these types of sensors in classrooms and make the data publicly available, so parents and caregivers can, for the first time ever, evaluate the air their kids are breathing. New York City is considering a similar plan for schools and government buildings. Amazon just rolled out a real-time air quality monitoring network across its entire global commercial office portfolio (Disclosure: I advised on this project, too, and my company performs ongoing analytics.) Organizations that aren’t yet thinking about how to implement real-time “health” monitoring in their buildings should do so soon for a variety of reasons. First, because the proliferation of lower-cost sensors represents both a paradigm and a power shift. The days of a company hiring someone like me, a certified industrial hygienist, to test a building with a $5,000 scientific instrument over the course of a day and then write up a report are waning. Now any employee or customer can collect rudimentary air quality data in real time with a portable, hand-held sensor that costs about $150. People are taking these sensors into their offices, favorite coffee shops, airplanes, and everywhere else and often sharing the results on social media, sometimes publicly shaming owners of venues where the readings are bad. This is a transformational change. Beyond not getting caught off guard, companies that deploy their own air sensor networks will find that they offer timely actionable information in moments of crisis (as in the wildfire and Covid-19 uptick examples). They can also help identify areas of the building where air quality isn’t dangerous but is still below the level at which research confirms there are productivity benefits. And sensors are a way to ensure buildings can be both energy-efficient and protective of employee health. Outlining the benefits Worker health, safety, and presence. Better air in buildings is associated with less sickness and fewer missed workdays. We know that viruses like SARS-CoV-2, influenza, and RSV are transmitted through the air, and “superspreading” events tend to occur indoors where there is poor ventilation and filtration. Some workers cite this as a reason for not wanting to return to the office. But when you monitor air quality, you have objective data confirming that the building is performing the way it should to remain healthy and safe. In the past, humans were the sensor, and companies would only know there was a problem when there were complaints, or, worse, people got sick. Now you can find issues before they become big issues and take corrective action. Worker productivity. I’ve written in HBR several times about the scientifically proven link between better indoor air quality and higher-order cognitive function across domains such as strategic decision-making, how people seek out and utilize information, and how they respond to crises in a work environment. In short, the air your employees breathe impacts how they perform, and the only way to know if you’re in the optimal range is to measure it. Optimizing health and climate goals. Air quality sensors can also be a secret sustainability tool. Buildings account for 40% of global greenhouse gas emissions; in some cities it’s 70%. As wrote in HBR in January, you could save a lot of energy by closing the dampers and limiting how much outdoor air comes in, but that makes for stale, germ-laced indoor air. On the other hand, many buildings are over ventilating certain areas — dumping cooled air into empty conference rooms all day, for example. If you’re already monitoring energy efficiency in your buildings, you should also have sensors monitoring health to find the optimal balance. Understanding the basics Having (hopefully) convinced why air quality monitoring is important, let’s talk about what’s involved. The sensors are small devices that hang on a wall, much like a thermostat, and measure a handful of key indicators of overall air quality in the space. The data feed into the cloud and can be accessed on a dashboard or integrated into existing building management systems. Nearly all the air quality systems on the market, including lower cost ones, measure the same handful of indicators, including: CO2: carbon dioxide is a great proxy for outdoor air ventilation. Humans are the main source of CO2 indoors, so if CO2 is high, it’s a sign that there’s not enough outdoor air coming into the building. The bare-minimum ventilation standard (which doesn’t protect against infectious disease transmission or capture the cognitive function benefits of better air) for an office equates to about 1000 ppm. Experts, including the Centers for Disease Control, recommend setting the CO2 target at 800ppm. PM2.5: One of the main components in outdoor air pollution is is PM2.5, which stands for “particulate matter