Why Do You Need an Indoor Air Quality Meter?

Indoor air quality, both at home and at work, is a serious issue that can be responsible for allergic reactions, short term sickness, and chronic symptoms such as fatigue. When a building is:

  • functioning with a poorly designed, maintained or operated ventilation system
  • located near the source of indoor air pollutants
  • being used for an unanticipated or inadequately considered use, possibly following renovation

then people may start exhibiting symptoms of dangerously low indoor air quality. Energy conservation efforts, beginning in the 1970s, lead to the use of devices intended to economize on the energy required to operate HVAC systems. The unforeseen consequences of these efforts included the increase of indoor air pollutants, and issues persist today: according to the EPA, some World Health Organization experts state that up to 30% – almost one third – of new and renovated buildings worldwide may suffer from “excessive” indoor air quality-related complaints.

The results to human beings of poor indoor air quality include Sick Building Syndrome and the not-always-acknowledged Multiple Chemistry Sensitivity. The cause of these diagnoses can lead to severe illness and death if not corrected. For the health of people, whether they are at work or at home, therefore, it is necessary to test indoor air quality and determine if action is needed to improve it.

What Do Indoor Air Quality Meters Help You Find?

In a typical building, pollutants are not present in sufficient quantity to make a person sick very quickly. Exposure over time, however,  may result in two kinds of symptoms: building-related illnesses such as asthma and humidifier fever, and Sick Building Syndrome – a range of irritations difficult to trace to a specific source, such as burning eyes, runny nose, headache, nausea and others, which disappear soon after the individual leaves the building.

The causes of these symptoms are often molds and other allergens, carbon monoxide, and carbon dioxide, which an indoor air quality meter can help detect. Other causes include volatile organic compounds like spray paint and cleaners, and life forms such as Legionnaire’s Disease, but these are unlikely to be detected by such meters.

Mold can begin forming mere days after a water event, if the materials have not dried out. High humidity can also assist in mold formation through condensation. Usually, a person experiences an allergic reaction to mold, and is at higher risk if already asthmatic.

High levels of carbon monoxide reduce the amount of oxygen supplied to the brain and result in nausea, unconsciousness and death. Since carbon monoxide is a colorless and odorless gas released when fossil fuels are not fully combusted, such as when a central heating system is not operating correctly, it is a dangerous threat to indoor air quality.

Carbon dioxide is a direct result of human metabolic activity: people existing in a building will give it a CO2 level. If these levels are very high, drowsiness and headaches can result. Building exhaust gases including CO2 may leak on their way to a chimney.

How Do Indoor Air Quality Meters Test?

To detect the possible presence of the illness causes above, the significant factors indoor air quality meters test for are carbon dioxide, relative humidity and ambient air temperature. More expensive models may test for a series of humidity-related variables, carbon monoxide, as well as measuring the ratio of Outside Air moving through the system.  These measurements can be compared against acceptable limits from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH).

Inadequate ventilation was identified over fifty percent of the time as the primary source of indoor air quality problems investigated by OSHA over a 10-year period. A workplace indoor air quality investigation procedure outlined by OSHA includes employer and employee interviews, a walk-around inspection to determine potential trouble areas, sample collection, screening of results against acceptable figures, and recommendations for the employer. A similar procedure could be followed with homeowners. An indoor air quality meter is therefore an integral component of such an investigation, and an important tool for the commercial and residential HVAC technician.

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Jason Kanigan is a technical writer for Global Test Supply, a distributor of test and measurement equipment.