Author: Laura Gabor (Co-founder, ecologicca) Workplace wellness is more than just multiple screens, standing desks, and walking pads. All of those things can certainly improve your work experience, whether at home or in the office, and they are definitely beneficial for your health and wellbeing. But have you ever considered the effects of the air you are breathing in all day, every day? You can scroll through social media any given day and you’ll see hundreds of videos about reducing screen time, eating “anti-inflammatory” foods, lowering your cortisol levels, you name it. We have yet to come across a video that links air quality, especially indoors, to inflammation even though the science backs it up. When you do the math, an average person takes about 6,700 breaths over a regular work day. You spend quite literally all day and night breathing. Most folks don’t realize that indoor air can be up to 2-5x more polluted than outdoor air. Additionally, 91% of the world’s population live in areas where air quality pollution levels exceed recommended WHO limits. Increased air pollution levels cause inflammation in every system within your body. This leads to difficulty breathing, increases your risk of developing sleep apnea and allergies, exacerbates mental health conditions, including suicide , and has been linked to obesity . On the less extreme end, there are a number of people who suffer from sick building syndrome because of their working environments. Some symptoms include headaches, dizziness, fatigue, and difficulty concentrating which usually persist, chronically, inside the poor environment but then subside or lessen once people move outdoors or into a better space. Understandably, a sick and unhealthy workforce is not usually a productive one. Air quality is only going to get worse with the effects of climate change. Whether it’s wildfires, floods, or hurricanes, all of those environmental events will impact air quality both indoors and outdoors whether through smoke or mold. It’s time to become proactive instead of reactive towards the air in our workplaces. The first step is education. We can’t solve a problem we don’t know exists. Ensuring your clients understand the scope of indoor air quality issues and how it affects occupants in workplaces, whether at home or in the office, is paramount. And for employers there is a huge benefit to ensuring workplace wellness. Clean, healthy air can increase productivity, decrease sick days, and contribute positively to the health and happiness of employees. On top of that, building operators are now being hit with regulatory requirements such as ASHRAE 241 in the US. This regulation mandates a significant increase of airflow in spaces to mitigate the spread of infectious aerosols. This is directly at odds with decarbonization efforts put forth in ASHRAE 100 and in more localized regulations such as Local Law 97 in NYC. We believe these standards are just the beginning. The next step is action. How do we make air, especially in big cities, healthier and cleaner indoors? Redoing an entire HVAC system is costly, laborious, time consuming and most of the time unrealistic. Regular air purifiers don’t do enough. ecologicca’s proprietary ecosystem takes a holistic approach to tackle this major problem. It begins with some more education in the form of monitoring. Getting a baseline understanding of what particles are in the air, where they are most concentrated, areas with high occupancy rates or low airflow, allows for a strategic implementation of purification technology and for positive results to be measured. Based on the initial data, a rollout of our air purification technology can begin. What’s different about ecologicca, is that instead of filtering your air (we do that too!) we create fresh air indoors. There’s a particle responsible for that fresh, clean air you breathe when you are in a healthy environment, it’s called a hydroxyl. Our sustainable technology brings those particles inside to the occupants in your space. They have been shown to reduce the spread index of COVID , VOCs , bacteria, mold, GHGs , and more and they also have been shown to act as surrogate ventilation which can help reduce HVAC-related energy consumption. Some other things to consider during projects that can impact air quality are the types of paint, furniture, and building materials being used, and ensuring proper ventilation throughout the entire space during and after construction or renovation. Lastly, it’s important to continue monitoring the space to ensure that regulations are being upheld, there are no drastic changes to indoor air quality or occupancy rates and behaviours, and to gather continuous data for insights and analytics. As an example, ecologicca takes that environmental data, layers it with health data, and provides information around the environmental determinants of health in a ready to use dashboard for building operators or managers. Whether you are doing a full WELL certification, or just want to create a healthier indoor space, indoor air quality is a great place to start. Reach out to NICHE for Design or ecologicca , and get started today!