Patients may be one of the main reasons to improve IAQ, but they also are a considerable source of air contaminants. The standard addresses air temperature, relative humidity, contaminants, air-distribution systems, and pressurization. Considering that hospitals are areas where everything must be in perfect state, with strict hygiene standards and impeccable cleanliness, every patient expects to be treated in a proper environment that will help them feel better and not to worsen their health conditions. This is why even the air in the hospital must be clean so that it will not transport airborne diseases that could endanger the lives of the patients, therefore the healthcare professionals and the cleaning staff must preserve a high air quality standard inside the hospital. Powered by MedicalJobList.Com All Rights Reserved! Patient coughing can introduce contaminants into the air and onto adjacent surfaces. [Not a valid template]. data. Staff for these organizations is comprised of the doctors, nurses, housekeeping, maintenance, administration, etc. In a study by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, for instance, they found that improved IAQ improves worker productivity by 0.5% to 5%—a national workforce impact of $20 billion to $200 billion. By visiting For health care facilities, these components typically fall into four major categories: the patients, the staff, the building, and the outdoor environment. The applicable codes and standards will dictate the minimum amount of fresh air ventilation and total air exchanges needed for the various health care spaces. Hand-washing, the use of gloves, and the proper disposal of soiled gloves, bandages, and dressings are important components of a facility’s hygiene protocol that, when not followed, introduce the potential to spread the contaminants generated by the patient. By Christopher J. Stipe, PE, Graef-USA Inc., Milwaukee. In fact, the “rod of Asclepius,” which is a staff with a snake wrapped around it, is still used as the symbol of medicine to this day. Class B operating rooms must have 4 or 6 ACH, depending on room type, of fresh air ventilation, and 20 ACH of total air movement. Additionally, the location of any type of humidifier in the air-distribution system should be carefully analyzed to ensure the discharge of the humidifiers does not condense on any of the system’s filter media. Not only does the elimination of fungal contamination directly improve IAQ, but also the reduction of fungal growth on cooling coils increases the efficiency of the coils by keeping more of the heat-transfer surface exposed to the airstream. This document offers direction on how to prevent or minimize chemical, biological, and radiological contaminants from impacting the facility’s ventilation systems. Sloping the top to an area well intake could help prevent a contaminant from being placed on top of the area well and then remaining in place to be continually drawn into the system—the slope would cause the contaminant to roll off of the intake. When designing the system that delivers fresh air to spaces within a building, be sure to analyze the entire path of the fresh air, identify contaminant sources in that path, and employ measures to mitigate those contaminants. Therefore, the foreign visitors must follow some rules when they come to visit a patient in order to maintain a proper air quality inside the hospital and to keep outdoor contaminants from infecting the sterile areas. Since hospitals are often referred to as “defend-in-place” occupancies, the safety and quality of the indoor environment becomes paramount in many operational environments.
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