Healthcare professionals need to be better informed about the lifesaving impact of ventilation in homes, according to a headline speaker during the fourth annual World Ventilation Day (WV8D).
Garry Ratcliffe, whose family featured on the BBC’s DIY SOS programme, said his damp and poorly ventilated home was “slowly killing my kids” before it was completely rebuilt and equipped with a customised domestic ventilation system.
Three of Ratcliffe’s four children have complex disabilities and Curly, who was not expected to live beyond the age of one because of his severe cerebral palsy, recently celebrated his 15th birthday – thanks in no small way to the improved air quality in his new home.
Speaking at an event organised by the Building Engineering Services Association, Ratcliffe said his son was hospitalised repeatedly with serious respiratory problems until the indoor air quality (IAQ) at home was dramatically improved. He has only had to be admitted three times in the nine years since.
“We feel privileged because of the professionals who helped us. Ours is a story with a happy ending, but thousands of children are not so lucky,” he told BESA’s Ventil8 Day Exchange at the Building Centre, London. “Healthcare professionals rarely ask about a child’s living conditions even when they present repeatedly with breathing problems, but they should be having a conversation about ventilation.”
Pressure
Wider health and well-being considerations have led to GPs prescribing gym memberships in a bid to relieve the pressure on the NHS, and air quality should be the next focus, Ratcliffe believes.
As CEO of the Golden Thread Alliance of nine primary schools in Kent, he also said there was a role for educators. “Many children come in to school sick and not having slept well, so we should also be having that conversation about their living situations.”
He paid tribute to the team at BESA member company Farmwood M&E who developed, installed and continue to monitor the family’s closely controlled ventilation system. He urged the industry to develop more small scale retrofit solutions for homes and schools so “other families can have our happy ending”.
WV8 Day is a global initiative (#WorldVentil8Day) supported by industry bodies, universities, and environmental groups worldwide and takes place on November 8 every year. It aims to raise awareness of the vital role played by ventilation in tackling condensation, overheating, mould and damp in both residential and commercial buildings.
BESA’s ‘Ventil8 Day Exchange’ also featured a call for a public information campaign about the dangers to health posed by poor ventilation standards from the Association’s IAQ Group chair Adam Taylor.
“The UK had successful campaigns in the past for smoke alarms and carbon monoxide, so why not air quality in homes? It is probably because of the speed with which people die, so it is not given the same urgency, despite being responsible for many more deaths and an epidemic of respiratory illness,” said Taylor.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates there are 3.2 million premature deaths every year worldwide caused by household pollution.
One solution for the UK would be to impose a statutory approach to ventilation system maintenance, according to Taylor. He said we could learn valuable lessons from Sweden “which was like looking into our future”. Swedish law requires that only qualified people can install and maintain systems.
“They insulated their homes [much earlier than the UK] and then people got sick…which is what is now happening here,” said Taylor, who is also campaigning for an EPC-style system that would give people a clearer picture of the IAQ in homes and commercial buildings.
The high-profile air quality campaigner Rosamund Adoo Kissi-Debrah CBE also urged the industry to step up its efforts to improve public awareness of available solutions. She called for the industry to put its weight behind a proposed new Clean Air (Human Rights) Bill, dubbed ‘Ella’s Law’ in memory of her nine-year-old daughter who died as a result of air pollution in 2013.
The proposed law has cross-party support and had its second reading in Parliament the day after the BESA event. It is designed to force the UK to adopt new WHO air quality limits by 2030. It also references new research from the Royal College of Physicians, which provided evidence showing air pollution had a detrimental impact on almost every organ in the body.
“We have been talking about this for years, but now is the time for the industry to produce guidance that clearly sets out what people need to do to reduce the risk in their buildings,” said Kissi-Debrah who is honorary president of the BESA IAQ Group.
Frustrated
“People are frustrated by ongoing government inaction but also the lack of clarity about what actions they should take.”
Taylor said it was a source of “huge disappointment” that Part F of the UK building regulations covering ventilation standards was recently updated but referenced out-of-date WHO limits. “We need to lobby hard to get this changed,” he told the World Ventil8 Day exchange event. “Otherwise, this guidance will hold us back for decades.”
The theme of this year’s World Ventil8 Day was ‘Collaborate to Ventilate’ and the BESA event heard repeated calls for the industry to stop working in ‘silos’ and share solutions and best practice. “There is lots of great work going on that people don’t even know about,” said Taylor.
Dr Phil Webb, CEO of Health and Wellbeing 360, said there was “no such thing as an IAQ expert” because of the many different elements of the problem. “No single group has all the answers. We need a federated model where different specialists come together to address clean air in buildings.”
He also called for a radical change to the industry’s economic model from a focus on capital expenditure (capex) to operational spending (opex) so individuals and companies are incentivised to retain responsibility for their systems beyond design and installation to ensure they continue to operate as required by investing in monitoring and maintenance.
“They could then, quite reasonably, ask for more money to do that,” said Webb.
New legislation known as ‘Awaab’s Law’, which came into force on October 27 requiring social landlords to address mould and damp in their properties within 10 days, was welcomed by speakers at the BESA event. However, several pointed out that the law did not address the root causes of these problems – and could end up with ‘sticking plaster’ solutions that still left tenants’ health at risk.
Ian Gregory, chair of BESA’s Ventilation Hygiene group, called for wider and better quality monitoring of IAQ in homes as this would give building occupants a deeper understanding of their living conditions.
“My fear is that Awaab’s Law will lead to more people painting over mould or using bleach to clean it off the walls, which will actually make the problem worse…80-90% of mould is hidden in the fabric of buildings continuing to cause harm.”
Wearable
BESA technical director Kevin Morrissey reported that the Association was drawing on the expertise of its members and industry collaborators to update its guidance on IAQ and addressing mould in buildings.
“This is a priority area for us,” he explained. “Part F is a minimum bar set by government but we are collaborating across the sector and professions to go beyond that and take the next steps so we can deliver better quality indoor environments.”
He said the Ventil8 Day Exchange had added momentum to the Association’s work and created further opportunities for collaboration across the sector.
Taylor concluded by reminding attendees: “We build buildings for people not to save energy.”
Earlier this year, BESA joined more than 150 worldwide organisations in signing the Global Pledge for Healthy Indoor Air at the United Nations headquarters in New York.
The Pledge is an international commitment calling on governments, organisations, and businesses to take practical action to ensure that every person has access to healthy indoor air. It highlights indoor air quality (IAQ) as a fundamental human right and a critical component of public health, education, and economic productivity.
It states: “We declare, for the first time as a global community, that clean indoor air is a fundamental human right for protecting health and safeguarding well-being.”
For more information about BESA’s ventilation projects and resources visit the website here.