Healthy Indoors Magazine
Issue link: https://hi.healthyindoors.com/i/1455789
Bob Krell Founder & Publisher 4 | January/February 2022 Bob Krell Bob Krell is president of IAQ Technologies, Inc., a Syracuse, NY-based indoor environmental firm he founded in 1990, offering consulting, mitigation and training services to a variety of clients throughout the country and abroad. He co-founded IAQNET, LLC in 2013, and serves as publisher of its Healthy Indoors Magazine. Bob is the Producer/Director for the online video series, The Healthy Indoors Show, along with numerous other industry video projects and online events, and is Training Director for live distance learning offerings through IAQschool.online. Contact him at: bob@healthyindoors.com Publisher's Rant Indoor Environmental Quality (IAQ/IEQ) Takes Stage One L ast week marked some highlights for the indoor environmental industry that offer some promise for 2022 and beyond. The ISIAQ/CIRI Healthy Buildings-America 2021 Conference fi nally happened after numerous postpone ments due to the pandemic, albeit as an allonline event that was mostly limited to a onedirectional broadcast. There was a ton of valuable information offered with the program that should be of interest for both researchers and practi tioners. I had the opportunity to participate as both a Platinum Sponsor with Healthy Indoors ® , and as a presenter at the event. While that latter had more of a speeddating feel with 8minute oral and 3minute poster segments, it did provide the opportunity for many presentations from around the globe on a vast variety of topics to be showcased at the conference, which is a good thing. I plan on spending some time going through the session video recordings and down loadable submissions to take in some of the great content that was offered. My takeaway from the event—numerous presentations of interest on a vast array of subject areas, but not much in the way of facilitating the conference's professed goal of "connecting" researchers with practitioners (and vice versa), with limited chat Q&As, and no direct interaction between attendees. But for the price, the conference does offer a great body of information for industry professionals. We also capped off our pilot season for the Indoor Environments Show last week with episode6 featuring guests William Bahnfleth and Marwa Zaatari on the apparent indoor air quality paradigm shift that has resulted from the COVID19 pandemic. Healthy Indoors produces that program, which is a collaboration between ISIAQ and the IEQGA (Indoor Environ mental Quality Global Alliance). We had a very interesting discussion with our guests. You can watch the recording of that show and the other episodes on the Healthy In- doors® Online Global Community platform at: https://global.healthyindoors.com/c/ indoor-environments/episode-6 I also received a sponsored eblast from the publication of a prominent inter national cleaning organization on behalf of a chemical product whose headline boasts, "Kill COVID19 in 30 Seconds!" I'm honestly at a loss about where to begin with this. Perhaps with the fact that the pathogen is SARSCoV2 and "COVID19" is the name of the diagnosed outcome, or by definition, a virus is not alive, so you can't "kill" it? Or how companies use puffery that may misrepresent their product? Or how a purported cognizant authority organization accepts payments to send stuff like this out to their subscrib er list? I wish that this sort of thing was a oneoff isolated occurrence, but we all have seen this play out numerous times in our industry. Whether by intent, or by a lack of technical knowledge on the part of the firm's marketing department and the publication's sales team, the end effect is virtually the same. The waters are muddied, and credibility is lost. 2022 has already suggested some promise for the industry's ability to move things in a positive direction with re spect to our indoor environments. This is especially true if we are collectively able to seize this unique opportunity of public interest on IAQ/IEQ that was created by the pandemic. We need to do so by offering sound, credible guidance and solu tions. Everyone is watching us now…