Industrial ventilation systems are essential for comfort cooling and heating, but many people don’t realize it’s also vital for health! Ventilation systems play an important role in indoor air quality. Indoor air can be far more polluted than outdoor air in many industrial buildings. Ventilation can help minimize exposure to potentially harmful pollutants inside your facility. Even OSHA recommends improving ventilation to help with poor indoor air quality in the workplace. Therefore, consider the air in your building and determine if you need to service, retrofit, or replace your current ventilation system.
Effects of Poor Indoor Air Quality
However, you might be wondering why you should care about indoor air quality and improving it with ventilation. Poor indoor air quality affects those inside your building in several ways. For instance, poor air quality can cause many different symptoms, from headaches and respiratory symptoms to sinus and eye irritation and more. Many of the contaminants you might find in a building with poor indoor air quality can have short and long-term health effects for building occupants.
Health effects from poor indoor air quality can cause low productivity and increased absenteeism. This can have a direct impact on the bottom line for your company. First, health effects can lead to lost productivity when workers take more time off of work. However, another issue that many don’t realize is that symptoms from poor indoor air quality can also reduce productivity, which can also cost companies billions of dollars each year.
In addition to health concerns, poor indoor air quality might also affect cognition and work performance. One study looked at scores on cognition tests for participants in work areas with standard indoor air quality (or those that meet minimum standards and regulations), and those in optimized spaces with increased ventilation and reduced pollutant sources. There was significant improvement in test scores when the participants were in the optimized air quality space compared to the standard space. This was particularly true for areas like information processing, strategizing, and decision-making during work crises. Therefore, high quality indoor air could improve cognition and productivity.
Common Contaminants that Reduce Indoor Air Quality
There are many different pollutants that can affect indoor air quality. In fact, just having people inside your building without proper ventilation can cause a problem! When we breathe, we release carbon dioxide. High levels of carbon dioxide also reduce indoor air quality. So, as you can see, controlling all the different sources of poor indoor air quality is practically impossible. Some other pollutants include:
- Off gases from building materials and furniture
- Chemicals in cleaning products
- Dust
- Mold
- Mildew
- Bacteria and viruses
- Dust mites
- Pollen
Even chemicals from dry erase markers can contribute to poor indoor air quality in your commercial building. Therefore, while source control can help with indoor air quality, it’s best to combine that strategy with effective commercial ventilation systems.
Designing Industrial Ventilation Systems with Air Quality In Mind
Knowing that industrial ventilation systems are important for indoor air quality is one of the first steps toward improving the air in your facility. Then you can work with a ventilation specialist to design a system that takes indoor air quality into account. This typically includes air exchange, exhaust systems for contaminants, and filtration to trap pollutants.
Air Exchange
One important principle of indoor air quality is air exchange. We’ve talked a lot about this already: replacing contaminated indoor air for fresh outdoor air. How your ventilation system accomplishes this will depend on a lot of different factors. For example, some systems will use industrial fans and ventilation equipment to mechanically force air exchange. Others might use natural processes and openings in the building envelope to increase the amount of fresh air in the building. This all depends on your goals, but every ventilation system should include some method for air exchange.
Exhaust for Contaminants
Another important part of ventilation systems for commercial buildings is an exhaust system. Exhaust systems help draw out contaminated air that could reduce indoor air quality. Once again, achieving this goal looks a little different for each building. However, most facilities use either axial fans or centrifugal blowers to help move air through an exhaust duct and outside to keep indoor air safe, healthy, and comfortable.
Filtration for Indoor Air
Air filters are also incredibly important for most buildings. These help catch particles like dust and pollen that contribute to poor air quality. This can help remove many of the pollutants both from incoming outdoor air and recirculated indoor air. For facilities that consistently struggle with indoor air quality, air purifiers with specialized filters can also come in handy.
Industrial Ventilation Systems from Eldridge
If you need ventilation specialists to help design an industrial ventilation system that helps with comfort and indoor air quality, choose our experts at Eldridge! We’ve been helping create successful environments since 1946 and are here to help you achieve your goals. Our team helps improve environments for people, products, and processes even for buildings with the most complex ventilation challenges. Whether you need system design or need equipment from industry innovating manufacturers, our team is here for you. Contact us now for a free quote and site survey!