723: Tina Brueckner, Elliott Horner, PhD & Don Weekes, CIH, CSP

[Music] this is IQ radio indoor air quality radio the voice of the indoor air quality industry with your host radio Joe Hughes and the zman cliff zoty and now radio Joe Hughes good day and welcome to IAQ radio plus it's episode 723 this week we welcome Tina Brookner Dr Elliot Herer and Don weeks we're going to talk about the new ashray guideline 42 2023 enhanced indoor air quality in commercial and institutional buildings before we get started let's thank our sponsors the show I radio Association sponsors are aih the American industrial hygiene Association at aa.org IICRC The Institute for Inspection Cleaning and Restoration Certification at iic crc.org the restoration industry Association R restoration industry.org the environmental information Association eia eiien usa.org IAQ radio industry sponsors are particles Plus at particles plus.com bioplanet at Bop planet.com actionable insights at get insight .org and now you can win a cool prize it's time for the IAQ radio trivia question be the first to correctly answer simply email your answer to C zlotnik cs.com or if listening live just text your answer from your computer and now here's the ZM hello everyone congratulations go out to Dawn Weeks Auto Ontario Canada who's here with us in person today Don was first to identify the relationship between ABC's Wide World Sports and Victor batage Don said that Victor bat's Ski Jumping accident represented the agony of defeat on the program and that's correct here's this week's IAQ radio trivia question in what year did the American Society of heating and ventilation Engineers publish its first Heating and ventilating guide back to you J okay so let's first introduce our Our Guest Tina Brookner is the senior engineering manager for engineering development at engineering system groups Federal Business unit she oversees a team that provides schematic and detailed design submittals scopes of work and measured and verified savings for the Technical Solutions on performance contract she's the subcommittee chair for guideline 42 and has a BS in electrical engineering from the Milwaukee School of Engineering and is a certified energy manager and Lead accredited professional Dr Elliot horer leads is the lead scientist at UL Solutions has worked in the indoor air quality field for over 30 years conducting research and field investigations providing training Disaster Response and litigation support and was the director of an IAQ laboratory he's a recognized expert on fungal allergens and the impact of moisture in buildings and he's published over 50 research papers and book chapters Dawn weeks has over 48 years of comprehensive consultation experience and project experience in the implementation and management of inspections for hazardous materials in numerous buildings throughout Canada and the United States most of our listeners are familiar with Dawn he is also a certified industrial hygienist and a certified Safety Professional welcome everybody great to have you aboard it's great to be here all right let's start with Tina you're you're a little new to our our audience so I want to kind of give the folks a little idea of what you do um tell us a little bit more about why you what you work uh what you do and why you're part of this effort sure um I work in uh performance Contracting which is usually focused around energy and so I've done a lot of energy Improvement projects um but uh early on in my career I discovered that when you close the outside air there's kind of scary things in buildings and uh it introduced me to this concept and uh when I I've been in involved with ashray for a very long time and one of the Committees uh that I got involved with was standard 621 and uh when we started getting involved with 621 um you know it was kind of my first standard that I was involved with and I guess I never made the connection that you really can only meet code with 62 or with the standard and so uh when the concept of the guideline came about in our discussions it was how do we go above and beyond the standard and so I was pretty darn interested in helping with the document that we're talking about today tin is it is it accurate to say that uh this guideline Builds on to what's kind of required by 62.1 yes that's exactly what it is all about it's really going above and beyond um the the standard but also making sure uh that we're using using validated information to create that so let's let's go over to Dr Elliot horn or Elliot can you update our listeners I can't believe it's been over 10 years since you've been on the show uh at that time I don't think you were with UL can you give our audience a little idea of what you're doing these days uh I was already with UL at that point uh 2011 UL bought air quality sciences and that's was when I became a UL employee and then recently they a new CEO changed our name to UL Solutions but it's the same same UL um what have I been doing um some chamber testing got involved in uh particle measurements still doing some work with moisture and a little bit more work with standard setting uh groups like ashray and and asdm that's great to have you back after all this time I I should have had you sooner and of course a lot of PE people on the you know on the call know you but um why do you feel you you're the one who kind of told me hey we need to do a show on this and when I first saw it came out I was like okay that's interesting uh but I didn't have a copy to read and I didn't realize how good it is um and then you said you know we ought to do a show on this and I I was a able to get my hands on a copy and read it over what a huge effort and an excellent document um can you tell us a little bit more about what led to your interest in this and and why do you think the industry needed a guideline Beyond ashray 62.1 yes uh well as we were talking before the show I mean this is an ongoing effort that started probably in uh 2016 or 201 17 I was member of the um 62.1 at that point and this came up as a as as a guideline that would go be a useful tool for all the IQ uh Community you know looking to go beyond the minimum standards provided in 62.1 uh it took quite a while to to get this together because there was a lot of different information that people wanted to include in that in there but it certainly is a a guide that builds on the 62.1 which is the minimum standards particularly in terms of ventilation and enhances the indoor equality in a building so it's to fill a gap between the minimum requirements and the standards so it's leads to the best practice enhanced for ieq as shown in guidance 42 oh who wants to jump in here real quick and you know Aster 62.1 was updated in in 2022 and I just want to kind of start with what were the key updates at that point and then we'll build on that with a guideline well I'll start it off because I I I I've always been a big mouth so one of the big changes is has been with regards to the way in which the the standard uh looks at uh indoor humidity um there it was published in 2019 and updated in 2020 but it basically is you know it's a section uh in 2022 5.12 which talks about the type of of of elements or equipment and controls needed to control maximum indoor dueo so this is dueo replacing relative humidity as the criteria by which you judge whether something is successful um and obviously the current human humity requirements are meant to address mold and and comfort uh so it's it's a it's an impact on the design in terms of the amount of of water vapor that's available for condensation and it changes what you look at in terms of the surface as opposed to relative humidity which quite frankly is not a good indication of what might be on the surfaces around the area so that was changed and you can look in the in the section I mentioned 5.12 of 2022 which gives you a a pretty good idea of exactly what it is is in terms of the uh D Point 60 Dees Fahrenheit and and he shows a diagram which basically applies only to mechanically cooled spaces but gives you a good idea of exactly what you're what you're aiming for and Don don't forget that applies to periods of unoccupied when buildings are unoccupied which is what one of had historically been one of the problems is lack of humidity control during unoccupied periods thank you Ellie that's great to I didn't bring that up you're right so that was one of the big changes I saw um and Tina or Elliot what what else were you looking at in terms of changes um I think one of the things that uh also we were we uh reorganized the systems and Equipment area to reflect the actual air flow through the building to try to make a little more sense of the the process so that was also an update that came uh for for this 202 version you know you mentioned that it follows the out the air and I noticed right away the guideline does the same thing it follows the air in the building uh Grayson can you put up that little outline we put together I want to kind of paint a picture for the audience that I would imagine most of you do not have a copy of the guideline in front of you right now but it's uh it's enhanced indoor air quality and Commercial International institutional buildings and it starts with outdoor air quality it goes over the the building itself the systems and Equipment the indoor air quality the procedures the construction system startup and commissioning and then operations and maintenance and then there are the references as well so what I'd kind of like to do is follow that outline a little bit and and get each of you to talk a little bit about the different sections in here I want to start with outdoor air quality because when I read it I was a little surprised um you know I don't think people think of outdor air quality as as getting better uh and and actually when you wrote in this can someone just kind of explain to our audience what you wrote about and in outdoor air quality well I think one of the things you just mentioned is is is true uh basically you know outdoor air quality has changed in the last decade but it depends on where you are in the world uh you know it it certainly is um is improved in in in U uh principal air pollutants have dropped by 73% according to U uh who guidelines uh now some of them have risen over the you know uh over the years CO2 emissions in particular uh have shown a um a gradual uh increase but have shown an overall decrease since 2007 uh and then other uh air pollutant emissions uh such as NO2 are down 44% sulfur dioxide levels down 70% and PM 2.5 is down 18 uh percent so these these principal a pollutants have U been reduced over that period of time uh but that still doesn't mean that there isn't need for additional U reductions and then the who guidelines that are referenced from 2016 and 2021 those that the information is important even though they are not standards of Legally buying criteria they are designed to provide guidance in reducing the health effects impacts of air pollution based on Expert evaluation of current scientific evidence so those those types of things are are important and and that's why indoor air is an interesting section in many ways well an outdoor air is is it changes a lot too I mean you get a lot of episodic episodes like for instance wildfires are a big issue these days and Tina you mentioned earlier that um you know you were involved in in the early days of you do some energy like work and shutting off the outdoor air was you know thought to be maybe something that would save some it saved some money obviously but it caused other problems um how do you see outdoor air these days is it is it a mixed bag definitely um again it's it's improved as as Donna talked about but you really need to bring in the right amount and then treat it properly inside which is um the parts that were really great about guideline 42 we really talk about not just the outside areas it comes in but how do you what more can we do once it comes in but yes outside air is a mixed bag it's great you need that ventilation but you also only should bring it in when you need to if you look at the energy side so that energy side i' I've always been uh I I I've been involved in these kind of like battles between the energy people and and the facility guys that are worried about indoor air quality and and do you see that often oh yeah everywhere I go um there's definitely a a mixture of people and what's important but you can manage both you just have to really communicate and work together on it I I think what Don mentioned earlier is going to help and that is moving toward looking at dupoint as opposed to relative humidity um would you agree Tina yeah I would I would do you see that in your practice do you see facilities guys starting to think about dupoint as opposed to relative humidity um I do I think um it's getting better and better the one one little gotcha that we see is that dupoint sensors are not quite as uh there there's more work involved in keeping them maintained correctly and so there's there's still a little bit of work to be done I think in improving that part of things to really make it consistent so we it it's a mixed bag I guess well and earlier Elliot you talked about you know you're looking at particles more and and I assume you're dealing a lot with particle you know lowcost sensors and I'm wondering what are your what are your thoughts on on how things have evolved over the last 10 years well there are a lot more lowcost sensors on the market uh some of them are quite good some of them not but let me uh hesitate our pause just a moment to go hit on another aspect of the dupoint uh measurements if you're managing the indoor air humidity the indoor humidity based on dupoint then you've got a very useful tool uh in an infrared camera to look for problem spots because if you know the dup points of the air in the building and as Don mentioned you know that doesn't the relative humidity of the air doesn't tell you what's going on of the surface which is uh with my background being with the micology the mold doesn't care about the air the mold cares about the surface and if you've got at least uh five 10 degrees celsus differ between your highest uh surface temperature and the dup point then that Gap is going to really inhibit any kind of mold growth so that's a a tool that can be coupled with the new vers the current version of 62.1 to really help people look quickly and easily for any potential trouble spots but now to your point about uh particle sensors there are a number of lowcost particle sensors that are quite good they still many of them will report uh readings in Mass concentration units that is micrograms per cubic meter I think that's not good practice there are particle counters just report the particle count um the conversion of particle count data to mass data M micrograms per cubic meter requires three or four assumptions to make that conversion that Ma mathematical correction none of those assumptions are ever true so you're violating about four or five assumptions when you convert counts to mass units um I think we'd be better off just sticking with the counts uh looking at it you know differential U measurements one place is uh lower particle count than another it's cleaner air we should just be aiming for cleaner air rather than looking for some specific threshold because particulate matter pollution the health effects of particulate matter do not have a bottom end the uh the lower you go the the better it is so just in my opinion you use particles uh is account and um try and keep it as low as possible and that's pretty practical pretty feasible these days with some of these lowcost sensors that are pretty reliable so that's a a big change over the last 10 15 years yes it is that's very interesting to me I I had not heard that before as many times as we've done this show you're the first to bring that up Elliot I appreciate that very much um and I always did when I did particle counting I did counts not I I didn't use the conversion often so I don't know maybe I had an inkling that something wasn't quite right I don't know but uh do many particle counters the low cost kind uh are are there any you can mention that specifically you think you're doing a great job I would not I don't have the brand names on on top of my head but there are several out there uh some of them have been evaluated with third- party testing procedures uh some many are not but uh uh the American Association for aerosol research for the last four or five years at least have had a papers presented about the use of these lowcost particle counters and a lot of them are are reliable and there's some very interesting research being done there are efforts underway to try and couple these lowcost particle censors with building management systems there also are Community science projects where uh school children are got particle counters hanging on the back of their book bag as they go through the day how much are they exposed to in transit how much are they exposed to at home and at school Etc so we're seeing a lot of good information come out of some of these sensors just going to get better over time that's great to hear all right so the next section we talked about outdoor a the next section was buildings and I I like how this was worded in here it said to avoid microbial growth the building and its contents must remain dry to accomplish that standard 62.1 requires that indoor dupoint temperature remain at or below 60 we talked about that but then it says keep the indoor air dry enough to reduce the potential for surface moisture absor ion that leads to persistent dampness damp materials allow microbial growth that can increase the probability of negative health effects and it it goes on to say although bacteria and fungi are present in all buildings and on all surfaces their presence is generally without negative consequences for air quality or health until surfaces absorb enough moisture for a long enough period to allow growth and reproduction I thought that was a pretty good way of of explaining that topic does that come from somewhere else or is that something that your committee put together well we can't take full credit for that uh you may recognize the name Lou Harman absolutely he he was very responsible for a 2020 uh ashray document called damp buildings human health and H HVAC design and it was a report of a actually a multidisiplinary task force on damp buildings so that's where that that information comes from that was go ahead jump in the um idea concept that was we were trying to convey in that paragraph because I probably had some fingerprints on that paragraph um it's not microbes are all around us it's not necessarily how many who who's there or how many are there but what are they doing uh I use an analogy sometimes it's like teenagers in your basement you really care that much about how many are down there or who is down there but you really care about what are they doing down there so when building materials and surfaces become damp enough accumulate enough moisture for these microbes to kick into gear that's when the metabolism starts that's when they start producing all sorts of stuff that's not was not there before and that's that's the con that also Keys into the dupoint um limit which helps you control moisture accumulation in materials and on surfaces and takes the focus away from what is the relative humidity in the air in the middle of a room I think that's a great statement for people to put even in their reports you know that it helps explain it in layman's terms for people that are dealing with buildings and trying to maintain and and um you know inspect buildings and so on um another another topic under buildings was unintended air flow across the envelope which I think is a a big topic and Tina I'm sure that's something you deal with a lot tell her listeners a little bit about the importance of unintended air flow across uh buildings well anytime you have unintended air flow you're having unintended consequences um and I I guess I I don't remember exactly what the quote is or the section um but in my world if we have unintended air flow we're also wasting energy so it's it's a combination of the two and how do you stop un intended airf flow uh there's uh stopping the entrainment uh building envelope ceiling and um managing that air flow I I guess is that answer your question sure sure I mean I do with a good design well that's where I was headed I think that's what your group does Tina you you you design and and help people with managing unintended air flows yeah and a lot of what I work in is are existing buildings not um a new building so I also deal in trying to manage it after the fact and that's probably even harder sometimes there's another section under buildings that kind of caught me a little off guard I don't know why but it was requirements for buildings containing environmental tobacco smoke areas and etsf free areas how big of a topic is that I mean how many buildings still have environmental tobacco smoke areas um from what I've seen it's it depends on the state you're in and the area um there's a few it's it's a lot less than obviously it was when I started in the industry um but it in fact it seems like people are in fact not just making uh no smoke within the building but within a certain distance from the from the building as well so it is getting better but there still are some locations out there um for instance casinos um you know and and that sort of operation they still use some of that tobacco inside the building and I think airports yeah airports that tend to have that too yeah also remember this is an international uh standard and if you still go if you go out Beyond North America there are a lot of places where smoking is not really as restricted as it is in in the United States so they going be situations where there are people still smoking in buildings there where you know watch buildings particularly in uh in either southeast Asia or in Europe or in in Africa which may benefit by having this particular standard out or guideline out there in terms of that let's go to the go back to the U the outline there Grayson put that up so we can kind of show people where we're at right now within the standard so we we started with the outdoor air quality uh we're talking a little bit about buildings now I want to move into systems and equipment and I noticed under systems and Equipment there was some interesting topics one of them being outdoor air intakes I I didn't expect as much detailed discussion of outdoor air intakes as I saw in the guidance document why why is there such detailed discussion of outdoor air intakes I guess I'll I'll take this real quick um I can give a a overview there um it's still a concept where people are putting or it ends up as you modify a building you are not putting those intakes in the right location that's one piece and you're getting entrainment reentrainment of air and from exhaust as an example and so um it isn't so much in original design but we're finding it a lot in building existing buildings that we at I see all the time in hospitals unfortunately um where they have every intention but they've modified the building so many times those that was not uh thought of early enough and through the process so and Don I'm assuming you know in all your evaluations you've done all over the place is a outdoor air intake location a common problem for you oh yeah I mean basically if you got a I mean the one I remember the most vividly uh was was a survey where we were looking at uh at the roof mounted uh U hva units and uh within 10 feet they had a discharge and so they were wondering why were they getting so much uh pollution or or you know areas where they were continuing to have problems with indoor air quality well was because the outtake was not really going to the to the outside it was going and being reentrained into the uh into the u h factor unit so it's it's quite common to have that kind of problem now it's getting less so as people renovate buildings and do something about the uh uh number of HVAC units they have on the roof but it's still it's still a major problem in terms of uh making sure that doesn't take place another section in there under systems and equipment is one that is near and dear to our hearts here and that is options for improved cleanliness and access um I think that's an important topic that oftentimes gets overlooked you spent a a a good bit of time and and there's references in in many of the sections actually to improved cleanliness and and access I wonder if um is that how did that come about why why did that become such an important topic in this document I think more than anything else it's it's because we're going to the enhanced level rather than just the minimum level um so the minim animal level is that 80% of the people um don't have a problem in terms of uh the air air quality the 20% if you have greater than 20% is considered to be an issue that's that's our criteria with enhance you're looking beyond that you looking to try to make it so that everyone feels comfortable maybe not 100% but definitely greater than 80% so that you you get a higher level of of cleanliness a higher level of improved indoor air the types of Haz type of problems that you may run into uh such as um you know um bringing in uh for example uh different types of animals into the building we have that now with Guardian dogs and things like that what type of of Hazards do we exist or may exist because of that so you want to you you want to go beyond what you have as far as the minimum in 62.1 and the best way to do that is to have a higher level of cleanliness in the building you there there's a comment excuse me and that improved access it should be the law that every AC coil have easy panel removal to inspect the both the top and the Bottom clean and dirty sides actually I thought you did a pretty good job in this document of describing just that and going over uh moisture carryover and very detailed terms um I'm wondering why it was in such there was so much detail in that area I assume it's because you had a lot of ashray people involved in this as well because that's their baby you know dealing with those coils but there was a lot of very interesting information on on coil spacing and you know coil access and so on anybody want to comment on that I I think basically what What U I saw the comment from Scott Scott is a good friend of mine of course uh I'll have to get him a copy of the book somehow uh so he can get some of these ideas uh yes you're absolutely right many most or a good portion of the people who are writing this chapter there he is there Scott clapping uh basically basically what we're looking to do is to take the ideas that have been percolating within uh the um different committees with the standard settings committees and within ashray and go beyond them and that's quite honestly quite an effort as we've talked about and it wasn't always with a lot of agreement okay let me tell you there's there's people who have different ideas and different ways of approaching it but we feel the this document is the staring point for looking at uh working closely together with people who are in the indor air area ashray and obviously with the occupational doctors and and nurses and things of that nature they can look at all of this and some of it is pretty it's pretty straightforward and I think that's why we did it that way is to make sure that people um you know have an opportunity to actually enhance their indoor air quality if they take the the different sections that we are talking about and apply them to the to the buildings that they're either building or that they're renovating all right I've got another question on that section and then we'll go to halftime in a moment here but um cleaning is mentioned and access quite a bit throughout the document but I didn't see any good references or uh descriptions of how to do the cleaning what type of cleaning is that something that's hard to find I'm gonna defer to Tina on that do you have some thoughts yeah I was just going to say that I don't know that we um probably focused as much as we should should have on finding the references for that so I couldn't tell you exactly if uh there are good references but what I would tell you is this document is under continuous maintenance meaning that we are going to continue to work on making it better and better that's certainly an area that we would we want to focus on along with many others there's constant good stuff happening and we don't need to be on people don't need to be on the committee to make continuous maintenance proposals so if somebody has information on how to find cleaning procedures the uh committee is certainly would would welcome that very much I'm wondering I didn't notice nadka the National Air duck cleaners Association any of their standards referenced did I miss it or was it left out for a reason it wasn't left out for a reason okay clear it was just not necessarily what we were looking at in terms of enhanced indoor air quality I mean are very good at what they do I mean as you well know I have lots of good uh colleagues working in ieqa and elsewhere who do that kind of work but it isn't necessarily what this document was about and uh you know certainly we can we can look at what they might propose and uh be glad to consider it within the committee Tina you have some more thoughts on that no I was going to say I think there's a lot of we can only cover so uh so many things all at once and again um this was the first time we wrote the document and so we're always looking for ways to enhance it and that very well could be an area we just didn't happen to uh pull their information into this one at this point how often do these get revised Tina Joe remember 62.1 is a design document for new buildings and the guideline 42 is an overlay as you mentioned before of 62.1 but it's all about design of new buildings not operation so duck cleaning if appropriate if needed is certainly valuable but that would be in a a different document I think okay and Tina how often is this going to be revised um we are looking I believe either on a three or a five year cycle I think it's but but keep in mind what we said is the committee meets more frequently so if you have a a u some change that you're interested in or have some questions you can certainly submit them in to ashray and they will be answered by the committee probably on a quarterly basis because we meet at least four times a year all right let's go to halftime Grayson I'm a little behind but uh I wanted to make sure we broke it a logical spot Association sponsors are aih healthy workplaces a healthier world ai.org the environmental information Association eia's multidisciplinary membership collects generates and disseminates information concerning environmental and occupational health hazards in the built environment at eiia usa.org the IICRC a nonprofit standards development and certifying body for the cleaning and restoration industry icc.org the restoration industry Association the oldest and largest nonprofit professional trade Association dedicated to providing leadership and promoting best prct practices through advocacy standards and professional qualifications for the restoration industry at restoration industry.org industry sponsors are particles plus feature Rich particle counters and air quality instrumentation count on us particles plus.com bioplanet at byoplanet docomo human animal and environmental health with electrostatic spray technology ology and advanced chemistries at biop planet.com actionable insights at get insight.org actionable insights no more mistakes no more missed line items in your exact theate estimates at get insight.org all right we're back we've got Tina Brookner Dr Elliot her and Don weeks talking about the ashray guideline 42 enhanced IND air quality in commercial and institutional buildings Cliff before I go on I want to make sure you get a chance to jump in here did you have any questions or follow-ups or comments well no I I I think just you know Scott Armor's uh discussion Point regarding cleanliness I I think that you he wanted to know what the difference was between dust and the system and uh you know same dust in the occupied space I think it's different because within the systems it it it uh it concentrates rates around turning veins and constant you know anytime you hit an obstruction anytime you change pressure so on and so forth it's going to concentrate in in in those areas and a lot of it's also going to concentrate more on horizontals as well so just back on you know Cliff you've been you've had a long history in in the cleaning industry can you think of any documents that maybe we could recommend be invol included here yeah maybe uh you know natka stuff I would think okay and uh you know there's a new IICRC document that Tom do uh uh Yak Bell's uh put together which is really cleaning uh systems following M remediation fire restoration so on and so forth that has some pretty good information in it so yeah but that would be more toward existing buildings I guess that's more towards well or that's more towards no not so much existing building it's just more towards problems so doesn't matter if it's a problem in a new building or problem during construction or problem afterwards it's just more event related because I think that's sometimes we're a lot of the challenges come interesting all right let's move on to the indoor air quality section this one is is loaded with great information um some of the topics of Interest are ventilation air distrib bution plenum system recommendations air classification and recirculation which is one I I definitely want to hit on and then it does a job good job of going over the different types of pollutants particles microorganisms and viruses gases and mixtures talks about ozone we don't have time to go through everything but I want to make sure our audience knows what all's in there I guess what I would ask is that each of you comment on that section and give us what you think are some of the key points let's start with you Tina um when it started with me uh oh um that's what we call an audible you never know what he's I didn't do that one very well um I guess a an area that um we don't see as much of anymore are plenum systems but they're still there in existing buildings so that was an area that uh was very interesting to me at the time and coming up with how do we handle that and making sure that that stays clean and and properly maintained was you were reading my mind Tina that was I when I read that section I was like oh this is one that I run into I used to run into all the time especially in schools can you go over do you remember some of the key recommendations on plenum systems how to make sure that when you do have a plenum system it's at least somewhat supporting indoor air quality yeah and I can't remember the exact um uh pieces I guess Don or Elliot do you remember Don do you recall I no I'm actually trying to look for the standard right now and look uh I Was preparing to to be the next aftera there talks about some of these uh contaminants which I think are important um give us a chance to get back to you uh Joe on that and uh we'll make sure it gets into the blog that the cliff will put in but right now I don't I don't have it on the on the top of my my head on this La was did you want to comment there well I will just jump ahead to the uh different procedures if you want to the one of the big uh one of the new new newer aspects of ashr 62.1 2022 was a revision of the IQ procedure and a substantial Improvement in my opinion there was having a list of design compounds that an engineer could uh for when using the IQ procedure would have some specific compounds to model against with their Mass uh balancing equations also it provides a relatively short list of gasphase compounds that uh La manufacturers of air cleaners gas phase air cleaners can request to be tested with uh in a Laboratory test to evaluate the efficacy of of these gas phase air cleaners and that was a battle with within 62.1 and with various commentors over at least six or eight years to be able to to get something in about how to uh what to look for what specific compounds to look for for examples and to facilitate adoption of the IQ procedure that's a big step forward and there's also you're probably aware a lot of uh activity right now within ashray looking at developing test methods for various gas phas air cleaners other than just racks of uh of carbon so that that was a big step forward I thought in my opinion mirror to some degree the the trend within IND a quality of going from reactive problem solving to proactive let's avoid bad Pro bad um situations that we've learned about in the past and maybe we could go into a little more detail on um the three procedures to design for indoor air quality the ventilation rate procedure versus the indoor air quality procedure versus the natural ventilation procedure La you just talked about the the indoor air quality procedure and and the list of contaminants I noticed that it was also in the guidance I think it's the same one that's in uh 62.1 is that accurate it should be yes okay the ventilation rate procedure most people are familiar with it's a simplist even a biologist can handle that degree of MTH how many square feet do you have how many people do you have you get so much per square foot of space and so much per person you add those together and that's how much air you push into the building uh the IQ procedure is designed and has been in 62.1 for a long time but had not been been widely adopted it allows a designer to reduce the amount of outdoor air ventilation if it can be shown to not negatively affect the indoor air quality and that requires understanding what pollutants might be there and what the impact would be of of design features and that could be design features could include low emitting materials that could be also involve air cleaning uh which allows you to reuse the air uh and save energy while not impacting negatively the indoor air quality uh the other procedure is I believe a natural ventilation procedure and I'm not qualified to speak on that one so I'll just mention that it is out there that's a third procedure that was kind of new to me too Don do you know more can you tell us more about that one yeah that that's that's again goes back to the International basis of uh of of these standards um many of the buildings that we go into in North America and in Europe are usually either heated or air conditioned in some fashion there's a ventilation mechanical ventilation system but that's not the case in many other parts of the world so when you want to basically meet the requirements of 62.1 and you don't have a mechanical system in place the natural ventilation system uh or or procedure will allow you to show that you've done all you can to prevent the um the inside uh problem uh of contaminants from outside uh being you know being an issue so it's it's there because there are many buildings where this is going to be pertinent and uh and you know they're not just they're not just residential they're they're big commercial Pro uh areas uh there's medical facilities there's all sorts of um areas that don't have a mechanical system where this particular method or procedure can help them U improve the endoor quality very helpful all right so that actually was we kind of got into uh Grayson put that slide back up if you would so we we've gone through um the outdoor air yes Cliff it wasn't me oh okay um we've gone through the outdoor air quality the buildings system and Equipment the indoor air quality and actually we just talked about some of the procedures when we talked about the ventilation rate procedure the indoor air quality procedure Etc next is construction system startup and commissioning and there were some really good tips on how to do construction without affecting IQ I think it referenced the smack the document the sheet metal and air conditioning contractors um you know which is for buildings under construction uh several other good references in there there's also a section on air cleaning devices and I wondered if anybody would like to comment on air cleaning devices which is a huge topic right now I guess I I just make a quick comment um there's we have some really good uh information in there around air cleaning devices but it is an area that is continuously changing and so a big Focus was to make sure it was around devices that have had the proper testing and and making sure that they will actually be effective that was uh constant especially during the whole covid world right that we've been living in lately um there were a lot of things that were happening in that Arena that we wanted to make sure we were really going to the the pieces that have a testing involved and I know that ashray in other areas are working hard and I'm sure there are other organizations as well on getting some test methods around this area that are more robust than what we have right now and so we think that's an area that will grow quite a bit in guidance yes if I can jump in on that the uh aham is one of the other organizations that now has for residential air cleaners a procedure a test procedure for gas space air cleaning and the covid uh epidemic triggered the development of ashray 241 most people are familiar with ventilation for controlling for managing uh infectious aerosols uh that included a test procedure t a set of test requirements both looking for efficacy for gas phase air cleaners as well as um looking for any byproducts and that was a warp speed development uh standard it did not go through the ansy process it will be in the future it's also under continuous maintenance but it has also triggered ashray 145 standard which is for gas phase air cleaners to develop program uh test procedures for air air cleaners that are not single pass and there are a lot of those out there and um that will be a fairly robust plan test plan and 62.1 will now be able to point to some of those other standards for evaluating both the efficiency the efficacy as well as safety is looking for any delarius byproduct production uh for any gas phase air cleaners so there's a big step forward in that and 62.1 had worked on that for years as Tina mentioned uh and certainly got um a lot of action jump started after the uh pandemic great you know there's a lot going on ellot and I I appreciate you jumping in there and adding that that's that's all uh important information now another area in under operations and maintenance I believe um is contaminants introduced by occupants and that is always something that people doing indoor air quality work have to deal with and I find that to be an interesting section um I did not notice any comments on personal care products or having a program for how occupants can avoid causing indoor air quality issues uh did I miss that or was that something that needs to be added would say that that you're right there's nothing specific in there in terms of personal uh products um so yes it would be something we would suggest that if there is an interest in that that uh that you go through the system of making a comment or making or asking a question whoever that might be and uh certainly can be addressed before the next uh Edition comes out uh but you're right it isn't in there what what the what is in there though is information about what other people might bring into Office Buildings uh plants uh as we mentioned already mentioned um animals of one sort or another their companions things of that nature uh and just um you know just the the um everyday slush that you bring in from the from the outside which can can contain all sorts of of stuff that's uh on the bottom of your shoes which brings up an interesting topic that doesn't have addressed in this document but you know there is a lot of movement of foot to have people take off their shoes particularly Northern climates so they they don't track it throughout the entire facility um and so there's a lot there but it's not complete as yet we we're looking always to add new things so if that's something that's of Interest please um please make a you know use the continuous maintenance system and uh get it in there I only bring it up because I I I find people complaining especially now with this Axe and and that the kids use and they they you know and and it's it's very irritating to people who have sensitivities and and it's it's something that needs to be addressed uh and it's a hard one to address because now you're talking about personal freedoms and and being able to wear your perfume or your your deodorant or whatever without somebody telling you no no no you can't wear that deodorant here so I think that's going to be a tough issue for you down the road yeah there's definitely a movement of foot in certain areas I know in in the province of no Nova Scotia they've had a law in put put into place or what they called uh a bylaw actually which says that you cannot enter a building if you are using personal products in a you know what it considered to be excessive Manner and so there's been a lot of test case over there in terms of doing that so you're right it's it's an issue that's going to be continuing to be an issue and Cliff before we jump to the Roundup uh any questions or comments no I'm good all right I see we got a couple messages if you could check the oh does the ashray guidelin suggest or recommend numerical IAQ standards or guidelines I think it points for the ones in 62.1 yeah and keep in mind that the these are are usually based on um uh criteria from other organizations not necessarily from ashery itself um so for example in the table that is in uh 62.1 a lot of them are from the California U guidance in terms of levels so it it there are guidelines there they're not necessarily standards because this is not that type of document but there is a lot of information out there that that gives you some guidance as to what is acceptable what is not all right I've got one more text that I I think is really interesting can you address the health of occupants is there info on how to assess either risk assessment or impact particularly the reduction of risk through the implementation of the guideline and occupant complaints who wants to jump on that one well you're throwing more grenades at us today uh than usual good J um basically I would say that the not the informative sections are addressing that if you look at that di that outline that you provided uh of the if you want to have Grayson put it up again I'll show the section that we're talking about um if you have appendix a it talks about the health impacts of air pollutants so that informative appendix a is something that you should take a look at uh in the DI in the uh book and I think it will be helpful in that regard hey while you got that up um if if you could just kind of go through these other of informative appendixes it's the only thing I think we didn't get to at this point except for startup well the issue formative appendix B we talked about it's zeroing in on the impacts of humidity and and microbial growth and a discuss is also due point I believe um and I will let somebody else take care of the next two Tina can you comment on the carryover sure um that appendix really is going through um a lot of the uh impacts on indor a quality in energy recovery and and having that crossover of the outside air and exhaust entrainment into your indoor space so it goes through some calculations for you I'd also say uh appendix D is case studies and that's a a great area that um where it's giving some specific examples of using the IAQ procedure which as Don had mentioned hadn't been widely accepted because it was pretty complicated uh the intention with those case studies is to help someone who wants to use that and actually see it in practice so give some case studies there um and then appendix is the references for fantastic let's go to The Round Up [Music] Grayson all right let's start with the zman Cliff's lck Cliff I hav been able to follow all the chat but uh do you have any any final comments or questions I I think there was one on there that that Ralph fic had which was uh does ashray guidelines suggest or recommend any numerical IAQ standards or guidelines and the answer to that Cliff is that there two areas one I I pointed to is the informative U appendix a uh which does discuss some of that but in the section on indoor air quality uh there are number U there numbers that are put up as guidance many of them come from the California um you I forget what the CC stands for but it there is a table that talks about a number of different contaminants that would be there so that's where I would look if I you know if I'm if Ralph is interest in looking at in in that uh in that areas thank you you know I also I want to mention there's a good section on construction system startup and commissioning we didn't talk a lot about that but commissioning is such an important topic that I I just wanted to make sure we emphasize how important that is Tina I assume that is one of the big things that your group deals with a lot yes we do um it's really making sure that it actually works the way you in intended when you did the design or did had the ideas and I deal with that every day um if it's not commissioned right you're probably going to have a problem later that's for sure absolutely and then operations and maintenance is a huge topic that you know we we've talked a little bit bit about but um I think that section is very important what I what I was thinking while I'm reading this I used to teach courses and I'm like oh this would be a great document to develop a course for people who manage buildings you know even though it goes above and beyond what you know 62.1 requires that's what they need and it gives good solid guidance to them are there any thoughts about developing a course that would kind of follow this and presenting that to operations and B you know maintenance people all over the world well of course we should do that I mean but um we just came off an eight eight-year cycle on this particular time come on D give is a chance to catch up maybe we need we need an education maybe we need an educator on this on this group yeah I think so the same D you are the one that mentioned warp speed before if you did it once you do it again yeah Joe are you up for warp speeding this I'm kind of sliding into retirement here I don't know we we'll see what happens but uh you'll be like Don in retirement he has all that extra time on his hands yeah yeah ask Lan yeah exactly um but uh on a more serious note yes it is certainly an idea that we have talked about um and we are as a committee we're going to continue to keep this uh you know keep this Evergreen uh because we have to answer to the question that people have the comments that people have the changes people want to put in so the committee itself is going to go on and those types of things will be something that they'll discussed Hey Joe you didn't forget about me did you no that's right you gotta let you gotta let me jump in now I didn't want to interrupt but go for I've already sent the text I'm gonna be late for my one o'clock zoom and I I don't want to say on the air the two people I pushed off so listen uh great show guys I I have a few comments that I'd like Cliff to put into the blog and then I I have I have a question I'm going to raise for the committee Don maybe you may kick it off and it was based on a conversation I had with Carl Grimes the other day so anytime I come off a conversation with Carl it's interesting and it's directly related to some ASR stuff the first thing I want to say is this whole thing with dupoint I'm glad it's coming up when I first started exposed to dupoint was in the 1980s before I actually went to work for Dres and started teaching the psychometrics in those classes and it really came from Monters you know Monters were the guys they always they always talked about dupoint it wasn't until late 80s early 90s when I met Phil Mor and Elliot you know we started talking about water activity and the differences so I think D point is great now from our industry standpoint well and actually the other thing Lou Herman wrote a book with cargo care in the early 90s called the moist control handbook and they talked about the use and application of humidity control systems to control dupoint and Southern climates in in supermarkets with the doors opening and closing all the time and everything dripping so this whole thing at dupoint it's been around a long time but it's been under the radar so I'm glad to see that happen from the restoration industry standpoint we have gotten so sophisticated now with the monitoring systems remote monitoring um all cloud-based technology to measure all this stuff so if you guys are not familiar with that you know inviting somebody from that sector may be helpful for you because we have to do it in restoration to that to show that we're in compliance with industry standards but more so to provide documentation we get customers to pay the bills so you know that's a big driver um so anyway I thought that'd be something helpful now uh the other thing is I remember those 62 days I was around then and I remember the argument and and that the multiple public reviews it went to was a battle between is asy going to write a technical document or are they going to deal with health issues which was uh you know was more right brain than left brain that ashray is normally with and that was probably one of the reasons why I took so long to get it out but I could see now and I think this started with that um that uh position paper that Ashley wrote on mold I don't know Don if you were part of that but I think Lou Herman was the lead author and he's presented that to a number of different audience including restoration I thought it was interesting so it seems that Ashley started at least moving in that direction uh to create this hybrid mix if you would between technical stuff as engineers and of course the implications of the of the health so I think that's a good thing um so let me get to the to the key po Point here that I got into a discussion with Mr Grimes about he said that he is on a committee now and ashy is writing a position paper on indoor Environmental Quality and I I suspect that there's some uh CIA uh you know AA people on there too because it seems that it crosses over into the industrial hygiene area now this conversation came up with Carl because it differentiated I wanted to talk to him to get his viewpoints do between indoor air quality and outdoor air quality and and apparently under ashray Charter they don't deal with the outdoor air and all the outdoor environmental risk that all kind is mostly regulated comes under the EPA stuff but the indoor he this is something that he told me which was new to me said it's broken down into four areas the first area which directly impacts IND a quality are things that our audience and we're all familiar with that there's three primary drivers of indor air quality problems either voc's uh microbials or particulate matter that's I mean I learned that years ago and I when I was teaching with Jean cord tulson all that kind of stuff so that's just one category the other two uh are noise you know sound um or the other three heat and I guess Heat's a really big one and then I think the third one was light now if I got that wrong Don you can correct me because you're an Astra guy and an a guy but it seemed to me in talking to Carl when I listened to you got this show that that position paper is is going to overlap or be pretty closely aligned and parallel to the standard that you guys are creating now did I miss something or am I kind of on the right track there so I'll turn it over to you guys to comment on that because uh I think it's very relevant to the show and if you if your two committees aren't talking you probably should be well I can say this much we definitely talk to each other there's no doubt about that um sometimes we even make progress you never know but yes there there there is um there is SE I wanted I want to focus on one thing that he that Pete came up with which is the the whole idea of of of Health being a separate item uh from indoor air quality and from ventilation and things of that nature that was the rule of the board uh you know know they call it a Rob uh which is that they would not allow uh because because of the um the idea that that and that the engineers were not Health experts they shouldn't be commenting upon Health as being part of this issue uh which has been now eliminated it just got voted down uh in the meeting in the winter so we as an organization recognize health is a very big part of what we do within uh ashray and so the paper that you're talking about uh is certainly going to be um something that Lan knows a lot about because she's on the health and wellness PD uh physician document on that so she and Charlene Bayer and some other folks are working on that pie so I I think that you're going to see more of that type of activity going forward uh which I'm very much happy to see because I've been in member of ashery since 1999 and this is now I can actually speak up about health uh which before was not always considered to be something that we wanted to have as part of the discussion so thank you Pete as always for for bringing up those comments so don um I saw L she uh she put something in the in the uh chat log there about being on that committee so I think that's great the other one little thing I'll I want to remind everybody H in case Clifford Joe forget but that the thing earlier in the show where you said that when you got the audible thr you said you have to check on it and get back so it's in the blog and a couple of things that we've been talking about because the the document you know we could do a couple two hour three hour show in this but um remember we have the afterthoughts and the afterthoughts is where all these things can kind of be fered out and so it seem to me that that's where we can um you know bring the information that you got to take a look at it doesn't get in the blog or whatnot but anyway uh terrific job Elliott or Dany you guys have any comments on any of the comments I made before I log off here no I just thank you Joe for your um comments and good to hear your voice again great to see you Elliot Tina any final thoughts before we go no just thank you for letting me participate um and uh look forward to I'm going to now participate and actually listen to your blog I didn't know about it before so this is great well it's great to have you on board and and thanks for joining us today it was it was a real pleasure meeting you and Don before we go final thoughts uh just that you know if you're interested in the book which I hopefully this was our uh created interest please go to the ashro bookstore uh it's on sale now is the either a PDF or as a hard cover book so um you know go ahead and um and um make your you know get some information about that and go and and and pick it up and hopefully then generate some questions or comments on the overall document yeah that's one I'd highly recommend I think it's one that should be in your you know if you're if you're dealing with indoor air quality it's it's one you should be aware of and uh one that you should probably have in your library so thank you all for joining us and thanks for all your hard work in putting this together I know it wasn't an easy an easy lift so uh these these documents can be uh a whole hack of a lot of work and and you don't get paid so thanks again for your time on the document and your time with us today this is Radio Joe Hughes saying thanks to this week's guest Tina Brookner Dr Elliot Herer and Don weeks also my co-host the zman cliff zlotnik Grayson gone fish and Fisher at the controls most importantly our sponsors and loyal audience we'll see you in two weeks with the next live EP episode of IQ radio Plus for IAQ radio I'm Spike real saying thanks for [Music] listening

Channel: IAQ Radio

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Id: q73iOTlsd8o

Length: 67min 49sec (4069 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 23 2024