Collaborate to Ventilate: A Deeper Dive into World Ventilate Day with Its Founders
As we approach World Ventilate Day on November 8th, it’s the perfect moment to reflect not just on the mechanics of moving air, but on the very reason we do it: to protect and enhance human health and wellbeing. Ventilation is an omnipresent, yet often invisible, force in our built environment. It’s a field where engineering, human behaviour, and public health intersect in every building we occupy.
In a special episode of the Air Quality Matters podcast, I had the pleasure of sitting down with the three founders of World Ventilate Day: Cath Noakes , Henry Burridge , and Nathan Wood . This wasn't just a conversation about an awareness day; it was a deep and insightful discussion into the core challenges, profound opportunities, and critical conversations we need to be having about the air we breathe indoors. This post offers a glimpse into that rich discussion, exploring the key themes we covered.
Key Discussion: Why Focus on Ventilation? An Action-Oriented Approach
One of the first questions I posed was, why "World Ventilate Day" and not "World Indoor Air Quality Day"? Henry Burridge offered a powerful perspective that set the tone for our entire conversation: the focus on ventilation is intentionally action-driven.
While air quality can feel like an abstract concept—something happening to us that is outside our control—ventilation is something we can do. It grants agency to everyone, from policymakers and building owners down to individuals in their own homes. This framing shifts the narrative from passive concern to active participation. The conversation explored how this concept of agency is crucial, as it distributes responsibility across the entire ecosystem of the built environment. As we discussed, there is no corner of an organisation and no type of building that doesn't have a level of responsibility for ventilation, making it a powerful and unifying focus.
Key Discussion: The Pandemic's Legacy and the Call for Collaboration
The COVID-19 pandemic thrust ventilation from a niche engineering topic into the global public consciousness. It asked a simple, yet profoundly revealing, question of our built environment: what do we actually know about the ventilation in our buildings? As Cath Noakes powerfully recalled from her experience advising the government, the answer was a resounding, “We haven’t got a clue.”
This massive knowledge gap highlighted a systemic failure to prioritise and understand the air systems in our schools, offices, and homes. Our conversation delved into how this realisation served as a catalyst for World Ventilate Day. It also led us naturally to this year’s theme: Collaborate to Ventilate. We discussed how effective ventilation is not just an engineering problem to be solved in isolation. Achieving healthy indoor environments requires a fundamental shift towards collaboration—breaking down the silos between engineers who design systems, the occupants who interact with them, and the health professionals who understand the consequences. This collaborative mindset is essential for moving from simply installing equipment to delivering real-world performance and better health outcomes.
Intriguing Insights: The Critical Issues We Aren't Talking About Enough
Towards the end of our discussion, I asked each guest what critical topic in ventilation and air quality we aren’t talking about enough. Their answers revealed the depth and complexity of the challenges that lie ahead and are a compelling reason to hear their full perspectives.
Henry Burridge raised a crucial concern about the "destructive power of apathy" that has set in post-pandemic, where the urgency to ensure good ventilation has waned. He challenged us to consider how we can change the mindset so that poor indoor air is no longer seen as acceptable.
Cath Noakes cautioned against the oversimplification of a highly complex science. While tools like CO2 monitors are valuable, she highlighted the danger of treating them as infallible truth machines, reminding us that real-world ventilation is dynamic and complex. Her insights serve as a vital check on the desire for simple answers to complicated problems.
Nathan Wood brought the conversation to the front lines of the industry with a passionate call for competence and accountability. He made the compelling point that while we wouldn't accept an unqualified person performing a life-safety check on a fire system, we often tolerate a lack of proven competence in those installing and maintaining ventilation systems—systems that are equally critical for our long-term health.
These distinct yet interconnected points underscore the nuances that a simple summary cannot fully capture. The interplay between these perspectives—battling public apathy while communicating complexity and demanding professional competence—is at the heart of making progress. Hearing the founders articulate these challenges in their own words provides a much richer understanding of the path forward.
Also This Week on One Take: Revisiting a Landmark Report on Damp, Mould, and Health
In this week's One Take episode, we step back in time to examine a cornerstone document that continues to shape our modern conversations about indoor environmental health: the 2004 Institute of Medicine report, Damp Indoor Spaces and Health.
Commissioned by the CDC in response to growing public and scientific concern, this comprehensive review sought to bring scientific clarity to the often-emotive issue of mould and its health effects. I explore how the committee systematically deconstructed the problem, from the causes of building dampness to the complex "soup" of contaminants people are exposed to.
The report’s most enduring legacy is its rigorous framework for weighing evidence, particularly its crucial distinction between association (where two things are consistently found together) and causation (where one thing is proven to cause another). This distinction is vital for understanding the science.
The key finding? The report established sufficient evidence of an association between damp indoor environments and a list of respiratory issues, including cough, wheeze, and asthma symptoms. This provided a solid scientific mandate for taking dampness seriously as a public health problem. However, it also revealed the significant gaps in our knowledge, concluding there was insufficient evidence at the time to link mould exposure to more severe, widely publicised health outcomes.
This episode unpacks why this 20-year-old report remains so relevant, as it perfectly frames the scientific and practical challenges—especially in exposure assessment—that we are still grappling with today.
The Air Quality Matters Podcast in Partnership with
Zehnder Group - Farmwood - Eurovent- Aico - Aereco - Ultra Protect -
The One Take Podcast in Partnership with
SafeTraces and Inbiot
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