David Baggs, CEO and Technical Director

With most people spending up to 80% of their time in indoor environments, be it at home, in the office, at school or university, it's becoming more and more important to ensure our indoor environment is a healthy place. This is even more necessary as buildings become increasingly air tight and ventilation systems become closed loop as people rely increasingly on air conditioning in summer time. This closing up of buildings comes at a price indoor air quality reducing due to emissions from various sources indoors and nowhere for them to go with the windows closed.

The term "building ecology" has been coined to describe the interaction between building environments and their occupants (Levin, 1981). A healthy building is one that does not adversely affect the health of its occupants or the larger environment and an integral factor in this interaction is the indoor air quality of a building or home.

Many studies have shown that indoor air quality can often be several times worse than the worst outdoor pollution (apart from sandstorms!) and poor indoor air quality can substantially reduce health of families and reduce the productivity and general health and immune system function of workers in the office environment.

Problem causing emissions can come from outside in the form of car, truck or industrial pollution or be generated indoors directly from appliances, décor (such as adhesives, paints, lacquers, vinyl fabrics and flooring, carpets etc.) building products (such as particleboard, medium density fibreboard -MDF), cleaning products and furniture and fixtures (that contain foams, padding, vinyl fabrics etc) and contain enormous amounts of potential polluting substances that emit volatile organic compounds or VOCs.

These compounds evaporate out of the materials at room temperature and can cause a range of serious health impacts ranging from irritation of eyes, nose and skin, headaches, fatigue, poor concentration or ability to think clearly, difficulty breathing and nausea to long term impacts such as liver and kidney disease, cancer (IARC) and so on with studies showing 5% to 40% of office workers have been affected, depending on the symptom (Fisk, 1997, 2000). So it is very important to ensure the internal air quality of all buildings is healthy and clean.

Figure 1: DV1 Air Ioniser for air purification
Image courtesy of Kempe (Aust)

While the best form of mitigation is avoidance, i.e. eliminating materials and products that emit VOCs from the home or workplace in the beginning, there are ways to clean up the air to make it healthy again. There are mechanical means such as air ionisers that produces negatively-charged ions which can assist in reducing airborne and surface borne contaminants and improving bodily function. These negative ion generators come at various scales for commercial use (such as DV1 illustrated in Figure 1) or residential/personal use such as Elanra, among the only ionisers globally to be officially recognised by government authorities as a Therapeutic Device, Elanra (shown in Figure 2 left to right as suitable for large room, small room/personal or individual), is registered in Australia by the Therapeutic Goods Administration, it is unique in generating small air ions. Small air ions are, compared to the medium and large sizes that in effect largely only clean air and surrounding surfaces, are medically active because they can be directly ingested by inhalation and pass through directly into the blood stream where they actively promote a variety of health benefits including:

• Better sleep
• Easier breathing
• Faster recovery from illness
• Less severity and frequency of colds and flu
• Enhanced oxygen intake
• Increased energy
• Better concentration and learning
• Stress relief
• Improved vascular system
• Removal of airborne pollutants including passive smoke
• General health and wellbeing
• Immune system recovery
• Reduction in Allergy and eczema
• Assisting with Chronic fatigue