clinical focus
Air of mystery
So, chemical exposure during development
may produce life-long issues, and some
may only become apparent later in life.
Kids from Year 1 to Year 12 spend a
number of hours in classrooms, therefore
the conditions of indoor environmental
quality and their impact on children’s
health, wellbeing, comfort and learning
ability remains an area of concern.
How could better air quality transform
the lives of those two age groups?
Aged Care Insite spoke with Rajagopalan
to learn more about why indoor air quality
is so important.
ACI: Why should air quality be on our
radar at the moment?
Project aims to demystify
ventilation quality and its
impact in aged care facilities.
Priya Rajagopalan interviewed
by Dallas Bastian
A
ustralians are increasingly
focusing on what we eat and
drink, but few of us are paying as
much attention to the quality of the air
we breathe – yet it can have considerable
health implications.
Now, RMIT researchers are working with
aged care facilities and schools to boost
the quality of life and resilience of residents
and students through improved air quality.
Project lead Associate Professor Priya
Rajagopalan said Australians spend more
than 90 per cent of their time indoors, yet
the importance of indoor air quality was
often overlooked.
“The quality of the air we breathe can
have considerable impacts on health,
wellbeing, productivity and the economy,”
Rajagopalan said, adding that children
in schools and older adults in aged care
facilities are especially vulnerable to
worsening air quality.
She said improved ventilation can
improve students’ attention span and
concentration, contributing to enhanced
educational outcomes, while older adults
could see improvements to their health
and wellbeing.
The research team, along with industry
partner Eco Pacific, will install filtered air
ventilation systems, along with monitors
that will track temperature, relative
humidity, carbon dioxide concentration
level, dust particles and pathogens.
30 agedcareinsite.com.au
PR: Indoor air quality directly impacts
occupant health, comfort and work
performance. Breathing conditioned but
recirculated air continuously without
adequate fresh air can actually cause poor
concentration of mind, lung disease and
mental disorders.
The problem is going to get worse, as
climate change has been worsening the
air quality of cities leading to increased
temperatures, level of carbon dioxide
concentration and other pollutants such
as dust and allergens.
Why did you decide to target aged care
facilities and schools with this research?
Much of the research on indoor
environments focuses on adult workers
in offices, because there are a greater
number of office buildings compared to
aged care centres or schools.
There is limited information on the
relationship between indoor environment,
wellbeing of the elderly, and the learning
performance behaviour of young children.
With an increase of life expectancy in
most developed economies, more of the
elderly will require or use the services of
age care centres.
For example in Australia, people aged
65 years or older make up a significant
proportion, and a number of studies in
other countries have found that elderly
people are susceptible to potential indoor
pollutants, even at lower concentrations
in comparison to adult workers. However,
scientific studies or quantitative studies
on indoor air quality-related impacts on
the health of age care centre residents in
Australia are limited.
If you look at students, lung development
continues through childhood and lung
function grows through adolescence.
The interactions between indoor
conditions and building occupancy is
very complex.
For elderly people, wellbeing is a state
of absence from any illness or discomfort,
and we hope that having more fresh air
reduces their visits to hospital, improves
their ability to do independent work,
and also reduces their dependency on
medication and healthcare workers.
For school children, we hope that this
will reduce their absenteeism and sick days.
This can also help them to concentrate
more, enhance their attention span,
and ultimately improve their academic
performance.
We’re introducing various subjective
assessments in the study to see how we
can measure wellbeing and education
outcomes, because it’s very complex.
There are various methods suggested in
the literature that look into perceived air
quality and wellbeing through questionnaire
surveys, observation, and so on.
We are also conducting attention
tests for little kids before and after the
introduction of fresh air to see how this
changes their attention span.
Should the study find that better
ventilation leads to positive changes,
what would you like to see happen in
terms of building and development?
We hope that we can provide some
evidence to the built environment policy
to say that supplying more fresh and
filtered air can indeed result in better health
outcomes for elderly people and better
educational outcomes for children.
We would like to quantify such benefits
with the use of objective and subjective
means. This evidence can support and
influence policy development and enable
the provision of more fresh and filtered
air in the building codes and performance
rating schemes when designing buildings
for these vulnerable groups of people.
This could be one of the strategies for
climate change adaptation. ■