Air Duct Cleaning and Air Quality

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It's generally accepted that the air quality in your building is a significant factor in ensuring a comfortable environment for people working there.

It's significant for two reasons. The first is the employer's duty of responsibility to the building's occupants under Health and Safety legislation.

More importantly, however, is the effect a so-called "sick building" can have on productivity. It doesn't matter whether the building is a school, a hospital, or a commercial or public sector office.

While several factors have been identified as potential causes of a sick building, from upholstery to humidity, the prevalence of computers to the office layout, one of the main factors is the quality of the air.

Health and Safety analysis has found that sick building syndrome is more common in air-conditioned buildings, where more than 55% of staff report symptoms and it has been shown to affect the level of absenteeism.

Maintaining the quality of the air circulating in your building by having a regular schedule of air duct inspection and duct cleaning therefore makes sense especially when, as in an air conditioned building, air is being circulated in what's effectively a closed and sealed system.

Dust particles, bacteria, moulds, excess moisture and fibres can all affect the efficiency of a duct system, especially because part of what it's designed to do is to extract pollutants from the building's environment to keep the air clean.

If people persistently complain of suffering from irritation to the eyes, nose and throat, skin irritation or rashes, headaches, lethargy or irritability and inability to concentrate it's likely that poor air quality in the building is a factor. If the symptoms go away after a person has been away from the building for a few days, you have some evidence that their cause is something in your building.

When you consider that most people spend more than eight hours of every day in their work environment it makes sense to help them stay alert, awake and able to perform to the best of their ability.

It could affect the level of care they can give patients in a hospital, and also the patients' recovery time. In a school it's obviously more desirable that pupils are alert and teachers not hampered by something like air quality in keeping them focused and able to learn.

Office work is sometimes repetitive and tedious, or in situations like call centres can be stressful if staff are dealing with an irritated or angry caller. If your staff are in a customer-facing environment representing your business or service it's obviously important to you that they can maintain a calm, helpful and professional persona.

The implications for your organisation's continued good name and ultimately profitability are obvious.

However, there's another reason why maintaining and regularly cleaning duct systems can affect profitability.

If you have a system that's not performing with maximum efficiency, it could be contributing to your energy costs but also, as new regulations are introduced for employers which will mean work buildings will have to demonstrate energy efficiency and emissions into the environment, duct systems working at peak efficiency are going to become even more important in keeping your overheads under control.

Investment in regular duct maintenance and cleaning therefore makes sound commercial sense.

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