Our indoor air quality project that is taking place at St Paul’s Primary School launched this week!
Indoor Air Quality is just as important as outdoor air quality. For this reason, The Camden Clean Air Initiative has partnered with AirRated, provider of the ‘global benchmark for indoor air quality’, to monitor the indoor air quality of a Camden school.
The St Paul’s Project
In order to demonstrate the importance of indoor air quality (IAQ) and the simple changes that can be made to improve it, we wanted to run a case study at a local Camden school in order to create a model that can be replicated. For this case study, AirRated has generously provided four IAQ sensors for the classrooms at St Paul’s CE Primary School next to Primrose Hill. These sensors will remain in the classrooms for three weeks so that we can monitor the IAQ and assess the current ‘state of play’. This is important as it means we have a ‘before’ score so will know whether our recommendations led to positive change or not.
What changes will we recommend?
After the initial three weeks of monitoring, we will encourage the school to make certain changes over a period of three weeks. This will include swapping out commonly used cleaning products for eco-friendly, low-VOC ones, kindly donated to this project by Delphis Eco. Other examples of this change will be encouraging the school to leave windows and doors open when in classrooms to increase airflow, introducing air-purifying plants, and encouraging active travel.
What do we hope to see?
Once the school has implemented these changes, we hope to see an improvement in air quality reflected by the sensor readings. This data will allow us to demonstrate to the pupils, staff, and parents, the impact that small changes can make on our health. We hope that if this is the case, St Paul’s will continue to implement these measures going forward.
What will we do next?
Once the St Paul’s Project has been completed, we would like to use it as an example to encourage schools all over the Borough to make these same changes to improve their IAQ. Once schools understand how quick and easy these simple changes and swaps can be and the significant impact it has on the IAQ, we hope that they will be encouraged to introduce them to everyday life at the school.
