ASHRAE announced the approval for publication for the first-ever pathogen mitigation standard, and was developed at the request of the White House, prior to the expiration of Title 42 COVID public health emergency.
ASHRAE’s 241-P: Control of Infectious Aerosols, outlines requirements for buildings to reduce the risk of disease transmission in indoor spaces. One highlight of the standard is the use of equivalent clean air, as opposed to just outside air. This means buildings using advanced air cleaning technologies will be able to bring in less outside air and still comply with the standard.
The standard will address long-range transmission of infectious aerosols and provides minimum requirements for:
- Equivalent Clean Airflow (combined effect of ventilation, filtration, and air cleaning)
- Room air distribution to reduce risk
- Characterization of filter and air cleaner effectiveness and safety
- Commissioning, including development and implementation of a Building Readiness Plan
- System operation in Infection Risk Mitigation Mode during periods of high risk
- Maintenance tasks and their minimum frequency
AtmosAir’s solutions offering is uniquely positioned to help buildings meet equivalent Clean Air Flow rates specified in 241P, while enabling building owners and operators the opportunity to sanitize and monitor the air quality continuously and proactively in real-time.
Air disinfection will become normalized as a solution to compliment filtration and ventilation to achieve much cleaner and safer spaces offering additional energy efficiency and carbon reduction. Bringing in less outside air can be more cost-effective and is ideal in situations where the outside air is bad or severely polluted, such as we saw recently with the Canadian wildfire smoke, therefore, providing further options for decarbonization efforts using less energy by reducing the outside air that needs to be treated.
