This is an important issue that was recently raised on the GJK Facility Services website:

“Across the globe, poor air quality contributes to around 8.8 million premature deaths per year, nearly half of which are due to indoor or household air pollution.”

The World Health Organisation has declared air pollution a ‘global public health emergency’, and poor indoor air quality costs the Australian economy an estimated $12 billion a year in lost productivity.

What we do know is that achieving healthy levels of indoor air quality is a complex and multifaceted challenge, that requires a lot more than opening a window or turning on a fan. It involves strategies like source elimination, building design, operational strategies, and human behaviour interventions.

It’s also important to consider the “journey of air” in workplaces: knowing who is responsible (or who carries the burden of care) in a workplace goes a long way to ensuring we can achieve and maintain good air quality. For example, what are the responsibilities of the building owner or facility manager? What of the tenants? And what of the individual occupants? All have a role to play in maintaining healthy indoor air-quality.

Not surprisingly, the question of air pollution came to the fore during the Covid pandemic, when the World Economic Forum began to question the role that air pollution was playing in the spread of the disease. In response, GJK authored a White Paper, “6 Essential Ways to Optimise Cleaning for Wellbeing and Productivity,” with guidelines for creating healthy surfaces, air and hands to create a safer workplace.

That paper is available to download here for anyone who is interested.