Healthy Indoors Magazine - USA Edition

4 | July/August 2023 Bob Krell Founder & Publisher Publisher's Rant The Next Decade of IAQ Bob Krell Bob Krell is president of IAQ Technologies, Inc., a Syracuse, NY-based indoor environmental firm he founded in , offering consulting, mitigation and training services to a variety of clients throughout the country and abroad. He cofounded IAET, C in , 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 H appy birthday to Healthy Indoors! Wow, 10 years. Thank you for being here. When we started this journey, life looked a lot dif- ferent. Credit the pandemic for changing the indoor world. I've talked about industry evolution and revolution over the last few months. Evolution is incremental, and revolution is transformational. Both can create change and we've seen both in IAQ since the late 1980s. If you're not careful, both can lead to extinction. Often, the path to revolution starts with evolution. Can you see it hap- pening today? As we always do on our birthday, we take time to reflect on what's happening in the industry, what people are talking about, and how things will play out. There has been some evolution and revolution over the past year. We talk about some of those changes in this month's issue. A few other things we're thinking about over the next 10 years: Doctors and Public Health: The public health system is overwhelmed, and doctors may not know or care what's go- ing on in your indoor spaces. Both are un- acceptable and won't be the best practice in the next decade. New guidance and standards: Just in the last year, we have new IAQ guidance and standards from CDC, EPA, ASHRAE, IICRC, and more. Is it true that it took 116 days to put ASHRAE's ground-breaking Standard 241 together? No more excuses then that we can't quickly change our world. Model law: See the inside cover story on page 16. Mold: We keep waiting for the public to "storm the castle" on the mold issue. Consumers, contractors, insurers, and lots of money. Oh my. Maybe the model law premise (see above) can help. Systems engineering: Data is going to rule the world in the next decade. IAQ is going to be all about key performance indi- cators, process improvement, building labels, benchmarking, value mapping, etc. Sure, we can add some MBAs to the professional mix, but maybe we also engage some in- dustrial and systems engineers to help, too. Reaching new generations: I'm old, but I do watch TikTok videos on occasion. If we're going to sell our products and ser- vices to a new generation, then we're go- ing to have to change things up. You can't pitch an air purifier for a college kid's dorm room, when they also have oil diffusers and plug-ins on the same packing list. Kind of defeats the purpose, right? Awareness and new education should start right now. So, what are you thinking will happen in IAQ over the next decade? Here are Healthy Indoors, we are ramping things up and will continue to revolutionize the way you get your news, information, training, and events. Stay with us!

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