BESA issues IAQ good practice guide
28th July 2021
UK: The removal of most covid restrictions in the UK has prompted the Building Engineering Services Association (BESA) to publish a guide to good practice on indoor air quality.
Indoor Air Quality for Health & Well-Being is said to be written to help building owners, managers and engineers interpret IAQ data and turn it into useful strategies for improving the indoor environment.
The new BESA guidance, which is part of the Association’s wider Buildings as Safe Havens (BASH) campaign, sets out target limits for a range of airborne contaminants in a variety of indoor spaces. It explains how air quality data gathered during specialist surveys or from the wide range of low cost real-time and continuous IAQ monitoring devices, can be interpreted and acted upon.
The advice it provides is also said to be based on the experience of practitioners in the field who see what is possible and achievable in the real world. It is designed as a follow-up to the BESA publication H&W001: A Beginners Guide to Indoor Air Quality published in March in collaboration with Mitsubishi Electric.
The BESA Guide refers to established guidelines including those provided by the World Health Organisation (WHO), which are due to be updated later this year. It also signposts other sources of authoritative advice on volatile organic compounds, formaldehyde, nitrogen dioxide/oxides, ozone, radon, and airborne micro-organisms.
It also recommends monitoring CO2 and a range of IAQ factors to balance good air quality with reduction of internally and externally sourced contaminants. Its guidance will also be offered to the BSI to help shape the draft BS40101 Building performance evaluation of occupied and operational buildings, which is due to be published in November and is currently the subject of a public consultation.
The guidance can be downloaded for free here.
