How Does Hot Weather Affect Indoor Air Quality & Public Health?

As the nation anticipates another heatwave in the coming months, it’s important to remember that it won’t just affect quality of life outdoors. In fact, hot weather can heavily impact indoor air quality and affect public health.

For business owners operating large premises, the problem isn’t just one of industrial cooling systems; ventilation has a more important role to play in hot weather even without looking at active cooling effects.

Hot Weather Affects the Air We Breathe

We all know that applying heat creates chemical change, but unless you work in pharmaceutical or certain manufacturing industries, typically we only think about that in terms of cooking or school science experiments. That makes it easy to overlook things like heatwaves creating ground-level ozone – which itself sounds harmless, but a build-up of low level ozone was one of the main causes of smog, which itself was a key factor in ill-health worldwide for decades running up to the end of the 20^th century.

Now imagine that reaction taking place in your work premises, on a hot, still day with no breeze to speak of, and without commercial grade ventilation systems you’ll get a build up of an invisible toxin. Everyone inside breathes in small amounts, and unfortunately, ozone can have long-term lasting effects.

Ozone isn’t the only airborne pollutant which is more prominent in hot weather, either. Many products slowly release airborne chemicals of a type known as volatile organic compounds (VOCs). That’s what volatile means here – left to their own devices, these chemicals will slowly shed their bonds and become airborne.

This isn’t a problem on its own, but as temperatures rise, the release rate of VOCs increases. When this happens indoors, they have three possible destinations – they can be ventilated outside where the concentration is much lower, they can be caught and filtered out by air purification systems, or they will eventually be inhaled by those in the building.

Obviously, the first two are significantly preferable.

Increased Heat Carries Health Issues

Even for those of us who are young and fully healthy, a prolonged heatwave can be unhealthy. As well as watching for dehydration (as well as loss of other essentials in sweat, etc.), it’s important to keep an eye out for overheating and other early symptoms of heatstroke.

The best way to prevent heatstroke when you spot the early symptoms is, of course, to get somewhere cool. During a heatwave, doing this in the workplace is best achieved through industrial cooling systems, including the fantastic Breezair evaporative cooling system.

We work closely with our clients to design solutions tailored to their premises. Our evaporative cooling systems can help reduce energy costs while maintaining a cool working environment, at significant benefit to the public health of everyone there.

We use these and other sustainable cooling technologies to help businesses like yours cut costs, become more eco-friendly, protect your workforce and promote an environment in which they can continue doing their best work no matter how bad it gets outside.

To start the conversation, or even just answer your immediate questions, get in touch today. We’ll be happy to help you.