Shore up your offices COVID defences – what can you do, to confidently get your people back to the workplace?

Let us help you get your people (including yourself) back the office, safely, healthily and with confidence.

As an Architect / Designer I’m sure you’d agree with me when I say COVID-19 is having a direct impact on our businesses. We need to safely and with confidence get our people back to the office. Here at Ergoair, we firmly believe the ‘Healthy Building’ surge will outlast the Pandemic. COVID-19 is making developers, architects, building & business owners alike realise that incorporating health concerns in a building’s design isn’t just a luxury – it’s a necessity.

As we are now embroiled in the next wave of COVID, scientists around the world largely agree that the pandemic virus SARS-CoV-2—like a lot of other respiratory viruses—transmits most easily indoors, in crowded and poorly ventilated spaces. I think it would be true to say that most of us know if we want to go back to work inside our office buildings—even while masked and 6 feet away from each other—something has to vent potentially virus-infused air. 

The reality is, it’ll be no different for your office and work environment, and people (your staff and clients alike) are really thinking about it, ‘Are these spaces safe? Are they healthy? What can be done to improve them? As this virus is invisible to the naked eye, how can we be rest assured that the spaces are safe?

Since March 2020, our present reality has developed into staying healthy indoors, our minds will go to topics such as social distancing and Plexiglass barriers, and only then, if at all, to factors such as proper ventilation and indoor air quality (IAQ). The sad truth is proper ventilation and IAQ will undoubtedly remain critical even beyond the pandemic. Not only does fresh air help prevent the spread of the flu and the common cold, studies have shown it also improves attention and increases scores on cognitive tests.

Research has shown that many other indoor environmental factors have quantifiable effects on health. Our immune systems and general well-being are shaped by the places where we spend most of our time. 

Back to SARS-CoV-2, which is a respiratory coronavirus that almost certainly has among its modes of transmission the ability to move almost like a vapour, in invisible bubbles of snot and spit or desiccated protein that waft on air currents, emitted by people showing no symptoms of illness? Transmission is most common indoors, where the air doesn’t exchange as often as it does outside. So one of the biggest ideas for decreasing transmission but still letting people go back to work safely—not to mention places like restaurants, theatres, and even schools —is ventilation: getting potentially infectious viral particles in the air out, and clean air in. It’s really the idea of equivalent air changes, or clean air delivery that is the sum of the outdoor air delivered to spaces to dilute contaminants and particulates, filtered air, and disinfected air.

One way to do that is to increase a metric called the air exchange rate—how often new air from outside replaces old air inside. A basic approach: Open lots of windows. But that only works if they’re there—and if the air outside isn’t even worse. A second angle is cleaning the air that’s already inside with a high-grade filter, either built into the central air system or with a stand-alone unit—mounted on a wall or in a portable air purifier. High-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters are probably too expensive and require too much energy to expect their use in typical HVAC systems, that’s why so much advice now focuses on filters with a "minimum-efficiency reporting value" (MERV) of 13. They’re plenty good enough for Covid-capturing.

That makes it sound easy, and it isn’t. If your office has central air the system it probably doesn’t replace the air more than once per hour, much less six times, as some of the new virus-oriented recommendations call for in other indoor spaces. Moving more air calls for bigger fans that run more often. And bigger filters as I’m sure you are aware can create something called pressure drop inside a system, slowing down the air throughout. It takes bigger fans to overcome that, too. And the main point of an HVAC system is making all that air comfortable, raising or lowering its temperature. All those things increase costs and the amount of energy the system uses.

There are however other options, such as Bipolar ionizing which puts electrically charged particles into the air. Bipolar Ionising units are mounted to new or retrofitted to existing HVAC systems and use proactive air purification technologies to deactivate airborne viruses. These bipolar ionization devices create millions of positive and negative ions. When released into airways, this is a proven method of destroying viruses.

Ergoair ionizers install in the supply air ductwork or air handler. As previously mentioned ionizers go in both new equipment or get retrofitted into older systems. First, the positive and negative ions generated by the device get released whenever air is flowing through the ductwork. Next, the ions form a cluster around harmful viruses, mold, and bacteria. Then, they trigger oxidation in these particle’s cells causing a breakdown of gases. Similarly, ionization eliminates volatile organic compounds and neutralises odours. Coronavirus is too small to get trapped by most common MERV filtration systems (<MERV 13). However, charged clusters of clumped particles are easier for filters to catch and remove from the air.

The result is a cleaner, healthier environment with less risk of infectious outbreaks. The net effect is Bipolar ionizers create cleaner indoor air and do not use UV light and therefore are ozone safe.

Another option would be to use portable and / or wall mounted air purifiers with True HEPA filtration. ErgoAir offer a commercial grade of Professional air purifiers which when used can mitigate additional pathogens in the air where people are infected, removing pollutants from the air and reducing risks for people already infected.

Ergoair’s range of AeraMax Professional air purifiers:

·        are certified to be effective in reducing airborne concentrations of influenza A (H1N1) aerosol in a test chamber, reaching 99.9% airborne virus reduction within the first 35 minutes of operation.

·        are certified to capture 99.97% of pollutants at 0.3 microns

·        can capture more than 97.8% of pollutants at 0.1-0.15 microns, via IBR Laboratories test data.

What’s more, an AeraMax Professional III & IV with Pure View Technology can sense when airborne contamination is present in a room, automatically adjusting cleaning to remove the offending particles from the air. This is ideal for places such as meeting and boardrooms as well as general office environments.

The situation regarding COVID-19 is fluid, with new information reshaping the landscape almost daily. As more information becomes available, we will include it so you are armed with decision-making power.

Senses Working Overtime

When we think about architecture, we often think about beauty and form, the things that look good on Instagram or in a glossy magazine. However, what we all know to be true is that we experience our spaces with all of our senses.

At Ergoair we take into account the array of inputs we perceive through those senses. Design components can influence us to make healthy choices: wide, airy “irresistible” stairs that just seem better than taking a crowded elevator; a main entrance for bike commuters rather than through a back door. Intentional room configurations and choice of materials can optimize acoustics, allowing irrelevant conversations to fade and dampening background noise—even the normal decibel level of a traditional office increases the risk of high blood pressure.

Installing sensors can help us understand health risks that are beyond the grasp of our senses—the presence of chemicals like formaldehyde, the level of carbon dioxide. I’m sure as Architects and designers you are already seeing increased demand for such monitoring.

What we cannot overlook is trust has become so critical between staff and employers. Having a level of transparency and understanding about what is going on in an office and how it impacts our health has been one of the incredible changes that we've seen over the last nine months. For this reason, Ergoair has a range of health and wellness sensors that can detect and measure in real time:

·        CO2 Levels

·        Humidity

·        Temperature

·        TVOC’s

·        Particulate Matter – PM 2.5 & PM 10

·        As well as LUX Levels and Noise (db levels)

Get Well Soon

Almost as soon as the pandemic arrived, companies began asking how they could make their buildings safer. Ergoair believes the post-pandemic future is a chance to fight for the things that really make people and communities healthy. We're not getting rid of handshakes and hugs and sharing pens. We're not going to be sitting 1.5 to 2 meters apart forever. We should cast them off as soon as we cast off this virus, and focus on the longer-term sustainable things that promote health and health equity.

That all being said, the pitch is compelling: New systems to bring fresh air into buildings where people spend most of their time could beat back not only this pandemic, but maybe the next one too—while making people generally healthier and also fighting global warming. That’s the change that’s in the air.

To find out more about how Ergoair can help you create a safer & cleaner indoor environment, contact Ergoair today at:

Phone: +27 (83) 284-9074

Joanne Nicol:             [email protected]

Matthew Buck:           [email protected]