The Importance of Air Quality Management

Internal Air Quality

Internal air quality can have a drastic impact on our health.

Bad air quality is strongly linked to a variety of severe illnesses.

It’s essential to identify it so that you work to improve it as soon as possible. An air quality assessment is key to highlighting issues with your air quality and building a plan to improve it.

Keep reading to discover more about the risks of bad air quality, or visit our air and dust management assessment pages for more details.

What Causes Bad Air Quality

Numerous interior and exterior elements can affect indoor air quality. Exterior factors include the proximity of a building to busy roads and building sites. The closer a building is situated to these will result in poorer indoor air quality.

Indoor sources include Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs), which originate from floor and wall coverings and furniture, dust, damp and mould, and let’s not forget the occupants, who release CO₂ as they breathe and are fantastic at spreading colds and viruses. 

Of course, with systems put in place to combat these sources, a building manager can achieve a good level of indoor air quality.

What Are The Health Effects Of Poor Air Quality?



We spend most of our lives indoors, so we must ensure occupants have access to a healthy and clean indoor environment by prioritising removing pollutants, allergens, odours and water vapour from these spaces.

Air pollution can cause many health issues, some of which can be severe. More mild health impacts include irritation to the eyes and respiratory systems, but prolonged exposure to poor air quality can result in developing chronic cardiovascular and respiratory diseases.

To put it into perspective, Public Health England has estimated that air pollution is responsible for between 28,000 and 40,000 deaths yearly, costing the healthcare sector £20bn annually. 

Growing evidence suggests poor indoor air can have a significantly negative impact on an individual’s mental health and general wellbeing too. Research argues that indoor air quality is a factor in conditions such as depression and bipolar disorder and can have a detrimental effect on children’s learning ability and productivity.

Whilst poor indoor air quality has an adverse effect on physical and mental health, it is important to note that good indoor air quality results in quite the opposite, boosting productivity and improving general health and wellness.

How Can You Achieve Good Indoor Air Quality?



Most people may think that opening a window could serve as a very obvious and simple fix to the issue. However, it could do more harm than good if it allows harmful pollutants from the outside to enter interior spaces. Instead, improving existing ventilation systems by maintaining and adding virus removal, heat recovery and filtration or installing an efficient new HVAC system is one of the most effective ways to achieve good indoor air quality.

Filtration can include HEPA filters, Carbon filters, and pre-filters for particles and UVC technology to control pathogens, including Viruses and allergens. Or better still, solutions now include a combination of UVC and VSC1000 solution, which is extremely energy efficient and will remove 99.999% of the nasties.

Ventilation systems remove stale indoor air and replace it with ‘fresh’ outdoor air, helping extract water vapour, airborne pollutants and odours, and assisting with humidity control. It can also include a heat recovery section – which can be 95% in returning extracted heat – a very considerable energy saving at a time when energy costs are so high.