Low VOC-emitting building materials and consumerproducts Development of a robust monitoring technology that can detect a wide range of VOCs, help monitor risks and identify suitable mitigation measures. School heating upgrade? The school holidays are the perfect time to replace your old heaters with the Smiths range of Caspian Fan Convectors - Common variants are available from stock - Easy installation and ongoing maintenance - Industry leading five year warranty - Manufactured in the UK In general, ways of preventing VOCs being introduced into the internal environment are preferable to filtration and dilution. However, this implies a far higher degree of awareness and labelling of construction material specifications and the consumer products routinely used in educational buildings. Moreover, building facility managers/employers should be required to monitor the air quality within an occupied space and report it in a standardised format, to inform occupants of the risks associated with breathing the buildings indoor air. This should form an essential part of progressive environmental assessment methods, such as Breeam and the Well Building Standard. There needs to be a shift away from correlating good indoor air quality with CO2 concentrations and, instead, a total concentration of VOCs is required. Specifying low VOC-emitting materials can help mitigate poor IAQ to an extent. However, VOCs can be formed through interaction with other VOCs or because of photolysis, hydrolysis or oxidation taking place in the indoor environment, so further studies documenting the hazardous properties of VOCs and the dynamic nature of their emissions are needed to help eliminate VOC risks. CJ REFERENCES: Please visit this article at www.cibsejournal.com for a full list of references. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: The authors would like to thank the School of Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering and the Department of Chemistry at Loughborough University for their support with this project. AUTHOR CREDITS: Melvin Mathew, Dr Rob McLeod, Dr Dahlia Salman and Professor Paul Thomas Ventilation standard/ guidance 01245 324900 | sales@smithsep.co.uk SmithsEP.co.uk | @SmithsEP_UK | #ThinkSmiths Carbon dioxide (CO2) limits 1 Education and Skills FundingAgency (ESFA), Annex 2F, 2017 Daily average concentration of carbon dioxide during the occupied period of less than 1,000ppm and so that the maximum concentration does not exceed 1,500ppm for more than 20 consecutive minutes each day, when the number of room occupants is equal to, or less than, the designoccupancy 2 Guidelines on ventilation, thermal comfort and indoor air quality in schools (BB101,2018) Similar to ESFA 3 CIBSE Guide B2 (2016) 800-1,000ppm recommendedrange 4 International Well Building Institute (IWBI), Well BuildingStandard Below 800ppm Table 2: Ventilation standards and the criteria for good IAQ applicable in the UK 22 April 2019 www.cibsejournal.com CIBSE Apr19 pp20-22 School Supp VOCs.indd 22 22/03/2019 13:17