Mngrs should monitor indoor air quality. (Technology Update).

Recent studies and computer modeling tools can help facility managers show not only that better indoor air quality improves working conditions, but also how much that improvement is worth in dollars. By demonstrating how higher fresh air flow into a building reduces absenteeism due to illness, any cost to condition such extra air can then be portrayed as an investment toward increasing employee productivity.

That's the message of "What's It Worth To Improve IAQ?" the January 2003 Tip of the Month" at www.energybuyer.org, a service of Energywiz, Inc. Energywiz is a New York-based energy consulting firm focused on helping commercial/industrial energy customers and their consultants get the most out of the competitive energy marketplace.

The tip reviews governmental and academic informational resources covering the relationship between fresh air rates and employee illness, and helps boil them down to a few simple rules of thumb for translating better air quality into dollars of savings. "Many environmental and energy issues are promoted because they improve the public good," says Lindsay Audin, president of Energywiz, Inc. "but to secure cooperation and funding from building owners, it's essential to convert those matters into hard dollars and cents. Through the use of computer models and the application of careful statistical analyses of air and absentee data from actual buildings, it becomes possible to make a compelling case for improving indoor air quality (IAQ)."

The January Tip discusses a study of a large industrial campus and a web site operated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), both of which offer unbiased findings and methods for determining the impact of outside air flow rates on productivity.