Healthy Indoors Magazine - USA Edition

22 | Januar/February 2022 Cover Story Continued from previous page Guidance. Combining theory and practice, he told his best stories and made things professionals do everyday matter. "The indoor environmental community is like a map of the Internet," he told attendees. "We're connected in many, many ways with many, many bridges. I think of it as a place where there's a concentration of research and information spreads out from there and then out to all the practitioners—the restoration community, medical practitioners, industrial hy- gienists, building scientists, etc. We all end up in the building." Lidia Morawska showed attendees why she was named to Time Magazine's "100 Most Influential People of 2021." A professor at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Brisbane, Austra- lia, and the director of the International Laboratory for Air Quality and Health (ILAQH) at QUT, which is a Collaborating Centre of the World Health Organization on Research and Training in the field of Air Quality and Health, she spoke about the future using what we know now to make some predictions. "What do we need? We need enforceable indoor air quality standards," she told attendees, adding that means concentrated levels of (selected) pollutants are mea- sured in every indoor space. "We can't dream that we will be able to monitor all pollutants in every space. But if there's no enforcement, it's not going to work." • Oral Presentations: There were more oral presentations (with an 8-minute time limit) than could be covered in an entire season, or two, of IAQ conferences. A session of eight presentations about schools… cleaning and disinfection…IAQ and health effects…SARS- COV-2…indoor chemical sources and exposures…comfort, productivity, and perception…indoor microbiome and fungal exposures…infectious disease transmission and control…venti- lation and HVAC systems…and more. Our heads are spinning. Grab the conference recordings and check out sessions by Dr. Anna Young on wearables, all the Healthy Building roundtables, and the session on HB Policy, Regulations & Future Strategies. In improve the inspection and clearance of water-damaged build- ings. Consumers could benefit over what's being used today. "We're hypothesizing that when the home is dry, there's a significantly lower health risk than it is when conditions are wet," he told attendees. "There's a lot more work to be done, but I think when we pair ecology together with the microbial activity, we can get closer to coming up with tools to be able to solve these problems. You may think that these tools are a long way off, but sequencing a sample is available now for about $30." The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) at a Healthy Buildings Conference? Anita van Breda, senior director of Environment and Disaster Management at WWF, made the case by teaching everyone about infra- structure and what the future holds. She leads their work supporting environmentally responsible disaster recovery, reconstruction, and risk reduction including international policy, operations, and training. She's also a member of the WWF Internal Covid-19 Working Group. "There's a lot to learn, and there's room for a lot of improve- ment," she told attendees. "We've been keen to focus on training the next generation of practitioners—in the environmental field, in the disaster management field, in the climate space, in architecture, in design, and in the disciplines and sectors represented in this healthy building conference. I'm going to take this back to my team to see if we can expand our level of understand- ing and appreciation for the issues that you all address." Greg Whiteley, chairman of Whiteley Corp. and adjunct fellow in the School of Medicine at Western Sydney University, shared his answer for resolving the vagaries of cleanliness testing with rapid ATP testing. He's cur- rently working on a simple smar t phone app to use with most brands of ATP testing devices to be launched in March 2022. "It's overcleaning if you're doing it unnecessarily," he told attendees. "You've done the job and now you're just going over the same area and wasting time and money. Hygiene theater is where you've got people doing stuff that looks spectacular, but they're not actually doing anything. People wandering around in space suits with respiratory masks on—full self-contained breathing, spraying rubbish everywhere—that's not cleaning. We need to define what cleaning is, and that's part of the problem." After listening to Terry Brennan's talk, we think every indus- try event should include a retired researcher or practitioner on their program. Now retired, Brennan is still a building scientist, educator, and author of the EPA's Moisture Control for Commer- cial Building Design, Construction, Operations and Maintenance

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