Companies put employee well-being at the center of their concerns and initiatives are numerous. But what about the air quality in the office?
Companies put employee well-being at the center of their concerns. Furthermore, according to BVA Opinion, 40% of young people consider well-being at work an essential selection criterion, before free time or pay. Toilets, meals with colleagues, flexible working hours… the initiatives are numerous.
What about the air quality in the office? Indoor air quality is at least as important as temperature or light for employee well-being. It is also one of the obligations of employers according to art Labor Code. If the company opts for natural ventilation, “the Labor Code provides that the control devices of these openings (door or window handles, for example) are accessible to the occupants of the premises”, according to articles R. 4222 -3 and R. 4222-4. A more than important measure when we know that the indoor air is 8 times more polluted than the outdoor air and that the indoor air breathed in an open space would be 10 to 20 times more polluted than the outdoor air. she studies.
In the office, employees are exposed to various pollutants: VOCs leaking from furniture and supplies, printer inks that emit ozone and hydrocarbons, viruses carried by colleagues, fine particles of perfumes and deodorants, CO2 … There were more than 500 different bacterial strains discovered in the indoor air of office buildings in France.
Schools already have an obligation to monitor the CO2 rate. Indeed, the harmful effects of CO2 on health are numerous. A CO2 concentration of “only” 1,000 ppm can lead to: worsening of asthma symptoms and deterioration of psychomotor performance in adults, deterioration of the ability to make decisions from 10% to 25%, a significant reduction in the ability to concentrate, memorize, resolve problems and performing multiple actions at the same time, an increased risk of oral viral transmission due to poor ventilation of the rooms and the onset of headaches. Schools therefore use CO2 sensors. Therefore, they receive alerts that allow them to open the window and ventilate before reaching a threshold that is harmful to the students’ health.
Can we imagine a CO2 and VOC sensor in our offices?
Article L220-1 of the Environmental Code states that we all have the “right to breathe air that does not harm our health” and on April 16, 2022 Emmanuel Macron announced a “huge effort to purify the air in our schools, our hospitals, our retirement homes and all our public buildings. You will see the first results by the end of this year. “But why stop at public buildings? This also applies to work and, already in 2019, the French who work in the private sector they represented 77% of the active population!
There is an urgent need for companies to take indoor air quality seriously and for the state to help them take the plunge by legislating on the matter. The socio-economic costs associated with indoor air pollution are estimated at 19 billion euros a year, and would cause more than 20,000 deaths! The Covid-19 pandemic has shown us the importance of clean air, the initiatives undertaken in 2020 to combat the spread of the virus must be supported.
