Thread by @jonlevyBU

1. There has never been more focus on ventilation in school buildings. This leads to the obvious question - what do we actually know about ventilation in schools, and how important it is?

THREAD

2. First, a primer. Many studies use indoor CO2 to characterize ventilation, because the primary source in a school building is people breathing, and the outdoor concentration is relatively stable.

3. A recent review article by Fisk reported that ALL studies in schools found average CO2 of over 1000 ppm, a sign of a poorly ventilated space (outdoor CO2 is roughly 400 ppm).

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.11…

4. This is no surprise to anyone who has spent time in school buildings. Fisk suggests that reasons include attempts to lower energy bills, noisy ventilation systems turned off so kids can hear, and older and poorly maintained systems. I would add overcrowded classrooms.

5. It is clear that increased ventilation is needed to reduce #COVID19 transmission risks, and many schools are taking action. But even pre-pandemic, poor school ventilation was a problem for health and learning.

6. Many studies have shown that test performance and ability to concentrate is worse with poor ventilation and inadequate thermal comfort in classrooms.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26317643/

7. This has also been shown in office workers (work by @j_g_allen), so teacher performance is clearly also affected.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26502459/

8. In poorly ventilated classrooms, teachers had more difficulty concentrating, headaches, and fatigue.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24920413/

9. It shouldn’t have taken a pandemic to give our kids and teachers a classroom ventilated sufficiently to be conducive to learning. Hopefully we now recognize that schools are critical infrastructure and that we need large and sustained investment in healthy school buildings.