The COVID-19 pandemic shone a bright light on indoor air quality inside airport facilities. When the pandemic subsides, should indoor air quality upgrades remain a priority? Joe Petrie, editor-in-chief of Airport Business magazine, spoke with Josh Jacobs, director of environmental codes and standards for UL, about the subject in a recent edition of the AviationPros podcast.
Jacobs said focusing on improving indoor air quality is another layer of safety inside airports. Vaccines are starting to be mass-distributed throughout the world, but that doesn’t mean airport officials should dismiss the importance of air quality. Jacobs noted there will be future pandemics, and airports must learn from the COVID-19 pandemic to be ready for them.
“A lot of studies that are coming out about COVID say that the better airflow, the better movement of air, the less particulate matter you have in your air, the less chance there is for that overload of the COVID-19 virus on us in the potential future pandemics,” he said. “We have no idea what the next pandemic’s going to look like. It will probably be airborne.”
What can airports do now to prepare for future pandemics? Jacobs said going through UL’s Verified Healthy Buildings program is a start.
“Essentially, it’s a scientifically-backed third-party verification of the indoor air quality of whatever space we’re talking about,” he said about the program. “It starts out thinking about the indoor air quality and it looks at things like volatile organic compounds, TVOC, the total volatile organic compound loads, ozone levels, particulate matters, things of that can really impact us on a human health level. And it also allows us to look at HVAC systems and things of that nature to see if they’re working properly.”
This program also takes into consideration water quality, acoustics, lighting and other items to make an airport facility clean and safe for its occupants.
Jacobs noted every airport should be interested in indoor environmental quality for their passengers, but bigger facilities tend to have more issues than their smaller counterparts.
“The larger ones tend to have more potential issues in the indoor environmental air quality because they’re bigger. They have more people coming in and out of them,” he said. “They have larger jets, they have larger highway systems around them and potential issues coming through. And frankly, they just have a lot more square footage. But, again, indoor environmental air quality is something that can be thought of along the spectrum of size and scope of the airport.”
Airport managers should care about air quality not only for their customers, but their employees as well, according to Jacobs. He noted improved environmental quality inside an airport can have dramatic positive impacts on people inside the airport.
"There are lots of studies around air quality impact on our health and productivity and return on investment of air quality and grades in school, even. Caring is the very first step and that's what they need to do and understanding how much impact it has on their customers," Jacobs concluded.
Click the link to listen to the full podcast. AviationPros.com/21212923
