Indoor Air Quality at School

Why is indoor air quality important?

According to AirRated, ‘children are particularly vulnerable to poor Indoor Air Quality. Around 42% of all pupils attend schools in areas that breach PM2.5 limits and 3.7 million pupils are exposed to high levels of pollution on a daily basis. This can have an adverse impact on lung development, brain development and lead to asthma, obesity and diabetes. Exposure to air pollution during the school day also leads to a significant reduction in cognitive performance and can potentially lead to sleeping difficulties. Improving air quality can have a huge impact on both the health and productivity of pupils.’

What are the causes of poor indoor air quality?

Poor indoor air quality can be caused by several factors including poor ventilation, choice of cleaning products, and the filtration systems attached to air conditioning or heating units. For such a significant problem, changes can be relatively low-key and easy to implement and this is where Camden Clean Air will come in. Your school will be able to see an increase in your AirScore, validating these efforts and encourgaing positive change.

Case study at a local school

We are trialing this project at a local school in Camden. AirRated have installed four indoor air quality sensors across the classrooms, which will sit there for three weeks and monitor the current state of play. Then, once we know what the indoor air quality levels are, we will make recommendations to improve these. This will include swapping all cleaning products to eco-friendly products kindly donated by Delphi’s Eco, increasing air flow by opening windows and doors, and introducing air purifying plants. We will then monitor the air quality again, and hope to see some significant improvements as a result of these simple changes.