Articles by Stephanie Taylor, M.D., M. Arch, CIC

It’s important for engineers to realize that the health of building occupants, both now and after COVID-19, is strongly affected by indoor air management.

Surprisingly, bats are teaching us about the relationship between indoor air, immune responses to SARS-CoV-2, and the COVID-19 disease.

When the ambient humidity is low, fluid losses through skin and breathing quickly result in mild but impactful dehydration of our respiratory tract and skin. 

When considering COVID-19 best practices, turn to the mammalian respiratory tract for guidance. 

The best guide to safe indoor climate management is to understand the data behind each recommendation.

As we move into summer, many unanswered questions about the COVID-19 pandemic remain. Who gets sick and why? 

We now have the mechanical equipment to create protective buildings, the tools to measure and track the connections between indoor climates, and the computing capabilities to correlate the data to tell us if we are doing things right.

The current illnesses from the new coronavirus outbreak, and the associated human fear, has renewed people’s interest in the potential of the indoor environment to contain disease transmission. 

Outbreaks of viral infections are unpredictable. We are currently dealing with one caused by a virus labelled COVID-19 which originated in Wuhan, China. 

In the wake of the 2020 ASHRAE Winter Conference and AHR Expo, let us look forward to the next era of innovation in the HVAC industry.