It's something that is important to health, but often overlooked: air quality.
As part of Yahoo Finance's Healthcare Week, senior reporter Anjalee Khemlani speaks with Director of Harvard's Healthy Buildings Program, Joseph Allen, on the growing awareness of indoor air quality's impact on health, spotlighted by COVID-19. For the first time in history, the CDC has created a health-based target focused on air quality control.
Allen says the pandemic revealed the need to address airborne risks, which go beyond COVID-19 to other viruses and health/cognitive impacts. Respiratory pathogens like the flu and the rise in wildfires demonstrate why air quality matters. He notes clean air's invisibility makes monitoring essential, referencing technologies like CO2 monitors which help enable individuals to properly asses their immediate environment.
Allen believes more widespread adoption of sensors is important for awareness and accountability. He highlights a new system deployed across Amazon's facilities (AMZN) to ensure healthy air quality for workers. While the pandemic awakened interest, Allen stresses that sustaining consistent momentum will require ongoing education and technology adoption to empower individuals and organizations to make indoor air quality protection a top priority.
"We've been in the sick-building era for forty years because we've designed our buildings without health-based targets, and that era is over." Allen tells Yahoo Finance.
For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live. Additionally, Yahoo Finance will be providing more analysis on the healthcare industry in its week-long special Healthcare: Industry Checkup.
Video Transcript
ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Welcome back to Yahoo Finance Live. I'm senior health reporter Anjalee Khemlani. The importance of clean air came to the fore in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Proper ventilation continues to be a key way to reduce the risk of catching the deadly virus.
Earlier this year, the CDC updated its ventilation guidance, explicitly setting a target for the first time. But respiratory risks extend beyond COVID-19 to the impact from wildfires, for those suffering with asthma and heart disease, and the heightened risk of catching tubularcolosis-- oh, my god, TB. So what precautions are governments and corporations taking and where does it leave the general public? That's a question I'm going to turn and ask Joseph G. Allen, associate professor director at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health and Harvard Healthy Buildings Program.
This is literally your life, Joe. Tell me about it right now. We know that the pandemic opened up this discussion. Are enough people taking it seriously?
JOSEPH G. ALLEN: Well, thanks for having me on first. And yeah, I think people are starting to pay attention to it and this was not the case before the pandemic. But people finally woke up to the reality that the way we manage our buildings, including air quality and spaces like this, determines how healthy we are.
And I don't just mean protection against COVID, as you said, but also against other respiratory pathogens, influenza, RSV, and also just making us feel good and more productive and actually helps our cognitive function. So there's lots of ways that the indoor air influences our health and performance. And most people just really weren't paying attention to it, but that's changing quickly.
ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Yeah, I know that one of the things that became really popular during the pandemic was those CO2 monitors, making sure you're walking around understanding particles per meter? Is that what it is?
JOSEPH G. ALLEN: Well, yeah, for carbon dioxide, we measure as an indicator for ventilation. We emit carbon dioxide. You can measure particles, PM 2.5, that's outdoor air pollution that penetrates inside.
But you're right, these new low-cost sensors are allowing people to see for the first time what's actually happening. Can't really tell what's happening in space like this unless you're monitoring it. And I wrote about this in "Harvard Business Review" just last week trying to raise awareness about these new tools that are available for businesses and individuals, employees. They can actually sense in real time what's happening in their space because you can't see what's happening.
ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Right, and I know that you helped advise Amazon on their new HQ2 down in Virginia setting up a really intricate system of pipes and real-time monitoring that helped during the recent wildfires. So is that essentially the goal that, you know, businesses have to look at to be setting up these kinds of systems?
JOSEPH G. ALLEN: Yeah, this is what's coming. And let's be clear, COVID changed and created some fundamental shifts in terms of awareness of what's happening and the need to make sure you're taking care of your buildings. Not surprising, a company like Amazon that's always ahead, is leading the market in this space. They deployed and we helped them deploy air quality monitors across their entire global commercial real estate portfolio.
ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Wow!
JOSEPH G. ALLEN: So they're monitoring it everywhere. And you know the classic business maxim, you manage what you measure. And so it allows them to see their buildings are performing great. And then if anything is off spec, you can go and take corrective action before it's an actual problem.
ANJALEE KHEMLANI: And some people might say, well, this is just a COVID problem. It's in the past. Wildfire is not such a big deal in this area. What would you say to that? Are the risks-- what are the risks that we're facing?
JOSEPH G. ALLEN: Well, look, we've been in the sick building era for 40 years because we've designed our buildings without health-based targets. And that era is over and there are these fundamental shifts I was talking about. First, the medical community is being-- and medical literature is being rewritten about airborne transmission of these viruses. That's leading to permanent changes into how we design our buildings and it's changing code.
You mentioned CDC, first time ever in their history they set a health-based target. That's a 40-year correction. On top of that, major awareness changes. The public is talking about this. Employees are asking about it.
You have low-cost sensors. It's technology changes. So all these shifts are playing. This is this movement is on. And what I wrote about in "Harvard Business Review" is that the era of head in the sand is over.