Indoor Air Quality Testing

Good indoor air quality enhances occupant health, comfort and workplace productivity and is therefore a significant component of maintaining a healthy indoor working environment.

The definition of good indoor air quality includes;

1. The introduction and distribution of adequate ventilation air.
2. The control of airborne contaminants.
3. The maintenance of an acceptable temperature and relative humidity
4. Conditions with which 80% of the building occupants are satisfied.

Regular monitoring of indices of indoor air quality will provide data that will assist in assessing whether and to what degree these criteria are being met, and highlight any shortcomings. Shortcomings in extreme circumstances can lead to complaints about internal air quality and incidents attributed to Sick Building Syndrome (SBS) or Building Related Illness (BRI).

Symptoms tend to be non clinical e.g. lethargy, headaches, runny nose and linked to a building because when the sufferer leaves the building the symptoms disappear. It must be remembered however that these kinds of symptoms can also be very heavily influenced by non-environmental variables such as personal, occupational and physiological factors, which can also manifest themselves whilst at work.

We have therefore at our disposal a wide variety of instrumentation that can be used to measure and report upon many different indices of indoor air quality such as:

• Air temperature
• Relative Humidity
• Carbon Dioxide & Carbon Monoxide
• Airborne Bacteria and Fungi
• Particulates (Total Inhalable, Respirable, PM 2, PM 10, UltraFine Particles)
• Formaldehyde
• Ozone
• Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC's)

Mercian Environmental Services offer:

• Indoor air quality assessments using currently accepted guidelines on standards for indoor air quality including ANSI/ASHRAE Standard 62-2001,Building Research Establishment (BRE) Protocol BR 450 , the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health (COSHH) Regulations 2002 and The Display Screen Equipment Regulations 1992 .
• Internal surveys of your ventilation systems to report on their condition and whether they are fit for purpose to supply sufficient uncontaminated fresh air to all served areas.We will tell you if in our opinion your systems require cleaning and disinfection and if they meet the requirements of ' The Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 in terms of their maintenance, ventilation rates and air temperature