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Are workplace ventilation systems failing to clean the air we breathe?

The air we breathe at work should be clean, but this isn’t always the case.

Fresh air is vital to our wellbeing, and health and safety regulations¹ ask employers to ensure that enclosed workplaces are ventilated by fresh or purified air. It is understandable if you assume that the heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system in your building is doing the job.

However, the reality is that many workplace ventilation systems are failing to clean our indoor air.

Why is clean indoor air important?

Indoor air pollution is believed to cause almost as many deaths as outdoor pollution around the world.

The World Health Organisation says that 3.2 million deaths were caused by poor indoor air in 2020, nearly as many as from polluted outdoor air (3.5 million)².

Another report found that 96% of the urban population in the EU³ was exposed to levels of fine particulate matter in 2020 above the health-based guideline level set by the World Health Organisation.

Because most of us spend 80 to 90% of our time indoors, in homes, schools, workplaces, hospitals and supermarkets, we need the air we breathe in these spaces to be clean.

Man looking unwell

3.2 million deaths linked to poor indoor air quality

Person cleaning

96% of EU urban population exposed to high levels of particulate matter

Woman sneezing

90% of our time is spent indoors

Ventilation in the workplace: health and safety regulations

If you’re an employer, you have a responsibility to protect the wellbeing of people in your workplace, who are less likely to have control of their working environment and air quality.

In the UK, regulation 6 of the Workplace Health, Safety and Welfare Regulations states that employers must ‘ensure that every enclosed workplace is ventilated by a sufficient quantity of fresh or purified air’.⁴ It’s also a legal requirement to have an air conditioning system with an effective rated output of more than 12kw inspected by an energy assessor, at least once every five years.⁵

Alongside these mandatory inspections, there are many reasons why an HVAC system shouldn’t just be switched on and forgotten, especially if your workplace air quality is not great or you’re hearing complaints about the environment.

HVAC systems and indoor air quality

HVAC systems play a big part in your comfort at work and are often the main source of heating, ventilation and air conditioning in your building. They are also essential in in maintaining safe carbon dioxide levels by ensuring your building is well ventilated, making proper HVAC maintenance a priority for any organisation.

As awareness of indoor air quality (IAQ) beyond CO2 grows however, there is a growing focus on the role of HVAC systems and their impact on determining the quality of the air you breathe.

Despite HVAC systems helping to ventilate indoor air and prevent dangerous levels of carbon dioxide, smaller pollutants are known to linger in indoor environments.

Common types of indoor air pollution found in buildings with HVAC systems include cold and flu viruses, mould spores, dust, pollen and volatile organic compounds (VOCs).

Your indoor air quality (IAQ) depends on whether these tiny, invisible-to-the-naked-eye particles can be frequently filtered out throughout the day. Air quality monitoring can help you discover the level of these pollutants in your environment, and whether your HVAC system is removing these or not.

Any decent air quality management system needs to remove these pollutants from our environment. Yet many workplace ventilation systems are limited when it comes to clearing harmful particulates.

Why don’t workplace ventilation systems clean the air?

Mechanical ventilation systems, also known as HVAC systems, are designed to cool or heat indoor air by pulling air through and re-distributing it, one to three times an hour, depending on the building type and design.

There are a few problems with this. The first is that one to three air changes per hour is too few. The lowest number of air changes usually recommended is six per hour for offices and up to 18 in food service kitchens.

The Environmental Protection Agency⁶ backs this up, saying that mechanical ventilation systems may not be designed or operated to bring adequate amounts of outdoor air in.

A second issue is that an HVAC system can only re-condition and re-circulate air and it cannot fully clean the air or remove tiny particulates such as virus particles and fungal spores.

Ventilation systems are not designed to use true HEPA filters, which can remove even the smallest particulates, so many of the pollutants listed above will still get through an HVAC system.

Even if the air around you feels cooler or fresher, there’s every chance you’re breathing in virus particles and other pollutants.

HVAC systems only re-condition and re-circulate air.

They don't clean or purify it.

Can I upgrade our HVAC system?

You might consider upgrading your HVAC system, but most of the measures you could take are expensive and/or not effective. These include:

• Ultraviolet germicidal irradiation (UVGI).

This involves installing ultraviolet lights or bulbs in your HVAC system. These bulbs emit an intense, short wavelength light intended to kill or damage the cells inside micro-organisms.

UVGI typically needs at least 15 minutes of intense, continual exposure to inactivate airborne particulates.

So, if the light intensity is too low, or the air stream moves very fast, as it can in a typical HVAC system, this will be ineffective.

• Air ionisation

Ioniser air purifiers shoot ionised molecules into the airstream to attach to air particulates, which causes the particles in the air to stick to surfaces. The obvious flaw with this is that the harmful particles are still present in the room and will simply become dislodged when disturbed by occupants, floating back into the air.

In addition, most ionisers are too weak to impact the particles in the air and the more powerful ones produce ozone, which is harmful, making this solution a non-starter.

• Better Air filters

You could look at installing better filters than the ones usually found in a ventilation system, but the best ones that can be fitted in an HVAC system are MERV filters - and these are still inadequate.

Not only are MERV filters ineffective at removing many of the very small pollutants and microbes, but any re-fit could prove to be a very costly exercise. There are often many filters in a typical HVAC system, especially in big offices, hospitals, schools or warehouses, so reinstalling every filter in a building would be no small job.

Besides being less effective from the start, the performance of a MERV-13 filter also depends on how fast the air flows through the HVAC system and how much dirt, dust, and debris gathers in each filter.

The higher rated MERV filters have been found to slow airflow down in an HVAC system and reduce its overall efficiency, because HVAC systems rely on a regular flow of air.

Check out our article, “From MERV to HEPA: The different types of air purification filters” to learn more.

Support your HVAC system with air purification

A straightforward and more practical way of improving air quality, with minimal disruption, is by introducing High Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) filter-fitted air purifiers that can run alongside, and complement, your HVAC system.

Rather than just moving air around a building, air purifiers with true HEPA filtration⁷ clean the air before releasing it out into the workplace environment.

Air filtration systems with true HEPA filters can capture 99.97% of airborne particulates as small as 0.3 microns. This includes viruses, bacteria, mould spores, dust mites and other allergens.

Diagram of air particles moving through filtration system Diagram of air particles moving through filtration system

True HEPA-filter fitted air purifiers are a great partner to an HVAC system because they can remove harmful particles as small as 0.1 microns from the environment, and distribute fresh, healthy air.

Discover how you can improve your indoor air quality by complementing your workplace ventilation system with our commercial air quality management solutions below.

Air Quality Management

Sources

1 Overview - Ventilation in the workplace (hse.gov.uk)
2 Household Air Pollution and Health (who.int)
3 Indoor Air Quality in Offices and Other Large Buildings | US EPA
4 The Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 - legislation.gov.uk
5 A guide to air condition inspections in buildings - GOV.UK
6 https://www.epa.gov/indoor-air-quality-iaq/what-merv-rating
7 Benefits Of Indoor Air - Fellowes®

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