Building standards lifted to improve ventilation post COVID outbreak

Stricter building design regulation to improve ventilation is expected under the new territory plan, informed by the latest findings regarding disease transmission since COVID-19.

Nick Nancarrow services filtration systems in many Canberra landmarks, including Treasury, the John Gorton Building and the Australian National University.

In many commercial buildings, air is circulated 10 times before being replaced he said.

"People get tired because the carbon monoxide levels increase the more that air is circulated," he said. "The more fresh air, the better it is for your brain and for concentration."

Peter Collignon, ANU infectious disease specialist, said a major overhaul of public buildings, with a focus on increased access to the outdoors, was required.

"We're talking about billions and billions of dollars," Professor Collignon said.

"The real issue here is 'how much money do you spend?' - particularly retrofitting."

Professor Collignon said rethinking design to incorporate higher ceilings and larger windows could reduce the risk of airborne diseases spreading, however, further research into ventilation was required prior to such major investments.

The ACT has already adopted National Construction Code for new buildings and buildings undergoing major renovations, which require ventilation systems to include the supply of outdoor air.

A review of the standards to reflect new research into airborne diseases will be considered in relation to the ACT's building regulatory system.

Professor Collignon said there was a firm push for High-Efficiency Particulate Air filters from people who believed COVID travelled through the air up to 30 metres and lingered for hours.

"Perversely, if it's mainly outside air [that prevents the spread of disease] it actually means you need to design buildings that you can open the window, rather than having air conditioning 365 days a year," he said.

"We've had this issue in the past with tuberculosis in hospitals, where you couldn't find a room where the air didn't recirculate."

Canberra Health Services has installed portable air purification units in its COVID-19 wards. The hospital's new critical services building will use High-Efficiency Particulate Air filters.

Professor Collignon said, in his view, hospitals needed to be redesigned to enable up to 90 per cent of patients to have their own room and bathroom.

He said preventing the elderly from accessing the outdoors in aged-care facilities was likely contributing to vitamin D deficiencies and shutting windows in classrooms could be adding to respiratory problems.

"People say, 'if we don't take any outside air we both save energy and you get less pollen', well that's probably true, but you've got to look at the downside of doing that, which may be an increase in respiratory tract infections because you're not inactivating them as much or getting rid of them."

Interest in air quality's effect on the transmission of disease has exploded since the pandemic, with the Queensland University of Technology soon to headquarter a new $5 million international research facility to further global understanding.

Lidia Morawska, International Laboratory for Air Quality and Health Director, will make Australia-wide standards for indoor air quality a priority in her new role leading the facility.

A nuclear physicist, Professor Morawska's interest in the field was sparked during the SARS outbreak in Hong Kong, a complete mystery to scientists at the time.

In this instance, an infected person spent a night in one of 22 buildings in Hong Kong's Amoy Gardens apartment complex while visiting a resident, she said.

The plumbing system was malfunctioning at the time, meaning there was no water in the toilets, allowing particles to travel down the pipes and enter another floor via the toilet, which was then exhausted outside through a window - spreading the disease to other buildings.

Professor Morawska said, in 2003, very little research had been done on how particles spread from human respiratory activities. She was hooked.

Since the COVID-19 outbreak, Professor Morawska has been doing everything possible to draw attention to the importance of air quality, giving hundreds of presentations and speaking out to the media.

She said whether state and territory governments were heeding the message was varied, with Victoria doing a lot to improve standards in buildings and Queensland doing very little.

Professor Morawska said every jurisdiction had a network of outdoor pollutant monitoring stations and any exceedances above the standards were investigated and actions were taken.

"But Australia, like basically the rest of the world, doesn't have any indoor air quality standards," she said.

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Professor Morawska said setting standards that measured the same pollutants as outdoors was not technically feasible in all indoor spaces. However, measuring C02 already occurred in many modern buildings and enforcing a standard was feasible, she said.

"C02 is a proxy for ventilation because it's emitted by people," she said.

"It is a problem at higher concentrations because if the concentration of C02 is too high, then we feel sleepy."

The ACT Education Directorate has provided 78 public schools with portable CO2 sensors and recommends organisations consider the ventilation of their indoor spaces.

Professor Morawska said while everybody was asking about new technologies to improve air quality, what was needed was social licence to use what already existed and an acceptance that mandating their installation could initially result in higher building costs.

"Developers are interested in reducing the cost of the building as low as possible, but they are not the people who are using the buildings and who'll be paying for problems like staff absenteeism," she said.

"This is not about this pandemic, because there's still a lot of work. It is investing in the future so the risk of spreading all respiratory infections is significantly reduced and we are protected against the next pandemic."

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