If 2020-21 has told us anything, it’s that the air we breathe may not be as fresh as it seems. Airborne viruses, once the concern of virologists and immunologists, are at the forefront of everyone’s minds. There are several longitudinal studies underway at Imperial College London, looking into different aspects of COVID-19 and mental health. These and other studies are already identifying worrying trends.
A paper published in the BMJ in September 2020 concluded that “Increased psychological morbidity was evident in this UK sample and found to be more common in younger people, women and in individuals who identified as being in recognised COVID-19 risk groups.”
As the leader of the University of Nottingham and King’s College study, Dr Kavita Vedhara, put it “The emotional toll early on in the pandemic appears to have been significant in the UK. This is perhaps not surprising as people were required to rapidly and unexpectedly respond to a range of challenges. What is crucial now is to examine if these very high levels of distress are persisting over time.”
The Air we Breathe
One source of significant anxiety is air quality, particularly for those who cannot avoid working indoors, including teachers, supermarket employees, key workers, and clerical staff unable to work from home. It is in the best interests of employers to do everything they can to reassure staff that their environments are as safe as possible as well as future-proofed, wherever possible, against further outbreaks.
Even where workplaces adhere to strict social distancing, hand hygiene and mask-wearing policies, it is often hard to maintain good air circulation. In the middle of winter, it is often impossible to leave windows and doors open. On the other hand, staff are aware that, rather than ensuring an even flow of fresh air, bad air conditioning merely circulates existing unclean air throughout the building.
As the World Health Organisation recently made clear “Ventilation is an important factor in preventing the virus that causes COVID-19 from spreading indoors.” The same guidance also instructs building managers to “Increase air filtration to as high as possible without significantly diminishing design airflow.” For this to work you need a high-performance system, such as that provided by Rejuvenair.
Rejuvenair is COVID-19 Safe
Rejuvenair’s state of the art air filtration uses NATO & MoD approved UVC lamps, shown to inactivate 99.9% of viruses and bacteria. Other systems often use UVA or UVB light which are less effective, or utilise Ozone ionisation, proven to be hazardous to human health.
UVC lamps within air filtration systems have been FDA approved as the most probably efficacious. In their words “UVC radiation has been shown to destroy the outer protein coating of the SARS-Coronavirus” (an earlier variant of the virus). Studies of UVC upon SARS-CoV-2 specifically are ongoing but a recent report published in Nature claims that “As all human coronaviruses have similar genomic sizes, far-UVC light would be expected to show similar inactivation efficiency against other human coronaviruses including SARS-CoV-2.”
In short, the rule of thumb ‘better safe than sorry’ applies. There can be no harm in installing an air filtration system which is the likeliest to solve a problem that will be with us for some time to come.
Future-Proofing your Air Supply
Coronaviruses and other airborne pathogens will be an increasing problem as humans continue to move to larger and larger cities and live in close proximity to one another. It is vital that we take every precaution we can to ensure safe working spaces, to combat employee anxiety and provide both reassurance and a pleasant working environment.
Contact Rejuvenair now to ask how we can help make your workplace a safe place.
