New ASHRAE Indoor Air Quality Standard Offers Reduced Virus Transmission Risk

One of the major lessons learned about the Covid-19 pandemic was the role ventilation played in its spread. In the summer and fall of 2020, the World Health Organization and then the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that the deadly virus was largely transmitted through aerosols, not saliva droplets as originally thought, and that the ventilation performance of buildings played a critical role in the health and safety of their occupants. Simply put, people who spent time in poorly ventilated spaces were at higher risk of being infected. The same principle applies to many other virus we are subjected to in our daily lives — from annoying colds to more serious seasonal flu and RSV.

ASHRAE, the association for the heating, ventilation and air conditioning engineering professions, was one of the organizations paying attention to those 2020 revelations. Its Standard 241, Control of Infectious Aerosols, (published in July 2023), establishes minimum requirements to reduce the risk of airborne viral transmission.