Healthy Indoors Magazine - USA Edition

HI January 2021

Healthy Indoors Magazine

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Healthy Indoors | 11 awareness campaign video for the International WELL Building Institute's Health-Safety Rating Seal. It stars Lady Gaga, Jennifer Lopez, Michael B. Jordan, Robert DeNiro, Venus Williams, Wolfgang Puck, Deepak Chopra, and former U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona. As a consumer who enjoys a celebrity plug for my indus- try, I'm going to say the video is a game changer. It's one thing to get Erin Brockovich or Ed McMahon to keynote your mold conference. It's completely different to get this level of talent to pitch your certification program. As a jaded industry professional, however, I was left wondering if having J Lo or Gaga telling me I should look for and then open building doors with a Health and Safety seal that doesn't explicitly tell me what's in store for me once I'm inside really works. I mean, why should I open the door? Isn't every building in the U.S. a "safe" building to be in? If I walk in, do I get healthier or does that mean the building is healthy. What is a healthy building? And why does a healthy building matter during a pandemic and I'm home anyway? Words Matter Well or WELL. What's the difference? Health, healthy. Safe, safer, safety. Sustainable. Resilient. Better buildings. Green buildings. Healthy buildings. Calm buildings. Health-Safety Seal. Healthy indoors. Safe havens. Now apply all that same language to homes or public housing. Wow, does being "green" even matter anymore? Mainstream media was on a warpath with the former Trump administration that words and truth matter. So how important are these words to a professional or even a consumer? Are they full of marketing or sales potential, or is there real science behind these words that we can start funneling to a public who now understands what it means to be cooped up inside for extended periods of time? We need to decide, either way. Advertisements Matter I love AXIOS newsletters—morning, evening, and now the daily sneak peeks. I've subscribed since before the Trump administra- tion. So, imagine my surprise when SIEMENS, a global energy and building technology company, sponsored my morning political newsletter one day and said they could provide "safer indoor environments." I'd say that indoor environments was suddenly a safe word to use in mainstream media. Looking forward to many more companies coming out to professionals and con- sumers to tout their products and services that could help. Does Social Media Matter? The pandemic really started for me on March 13, 2020. That's when my children had their last day of school for the spring semester. March was also the time when social media kicked into high gear for indoor environments. The word "indoors" was trending on all social media plat- forms, and our scientific community was ready to fill the void of information to a panicked public. TV and information outlets picked up folks like Harvard's Joseph Allen, Portland State's Richard Corsi, and Lindsay Marr from Virginia Tech to explain what was happening from an indoor science and engineer- ing perspective. Researchers on Twitter even fast-tracked and released papers and studies to make sure the information was getting out to the public and peers on a timely basis. I could spend hours listing everyone who contributed, or I can just say this: Social media mattered for our industry and professions for the last year. People paid attention. In 2021, as vaccines take over some of the headlines, we need to make sure more voices are added both on platforms and in the real world. People to Watch Last September, Elemental, a health and wellness publica- tion of Medium.com, produced a story on the "50 Experts to Trust in a Pandemic." It based its selections on health and science experts, but there was no aerosol/airborne scien- tists on it. As you can imagine, it created a little stir on Twit- ter. A month later, college professor David Eldredge made his own list of aerosol and airborne experts from Twitter. Imagine my surprise when SIEMENS, a global energy and building technology company, sponsored my morning political newsletter one day and said they could provide "safer indoor environments." I'd say that indoor environments was suddenly a safe word to use in mainstream media.

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