Companies responding to health concerns are focused on improving indoor air quality

A greater awareness of having fresh, clean air is a clear pandemic legacy.

Nine out of ten people and businesses think air quality in the workplace is important, a recent Dyson survey showed.

Yet in 2024, a quarter of the U.S. population will be exposed to air deemed unhealthy, according to analysis from environmental research group First Street. In the European Union, environment commissioner Virginijus Sinkevičius called air pollution the region’s “number one environmental health problem.”

Part of the problem is pulling fresh air into buildings. As the planet gets hotter, air pollution in already congested cities gets worse.

As a result, the OECD estimates companies across the globe already lose more than a billion work days every year due to air pollution.

“People have been aware of so called ‘sick building syndrome’ for years, along with the afternoon slump that comes with increased CO2,” says Terry Rose, HVAC Service Director for Integral’s Cooling Technologies division. “But with more people back in the office again, a bigger focus on workplace health and wellbeing is bringing ventilation and filtration systems back into the spotlight.”

Improving office air quality, particularly in summer and during extreme climate events, could deliver huge economy-wide impacts in cities like Singapore, Sydney and Barcelona, a CBI Economics 2023 study found.

Take Los Angeles, where better office air could boost productivity by almost 8%, translating to an additional $55 billion of economic output, according to CBI. Purifying London’s indoor pollution could provide an additional $21,731 of output per worker.