Paying Attention to Ventilation Hygiene is a Wise Investment for a Business

Copyright (c) 2011 Alison Withers

A variety of issues is covered by the regulations regarding a safe and comfortable environment at work and one of them is air quality.

There are two issues involved and these protecting workers from what is often called sick building syndrome and keeping the temperature in which they work at a comfortable level whether the outside temperature is extremely hot or extremely cold.

Both depend to an extent on the quality of the air in the building and in many work environments a measure of air quality and temperature control is maintained by installing ducted air heating and ventilation systems.

The Health and Safety Executive gives guidance and sets the rules for air quality and says that fresh, clean air should be drawn from an uncontaminated source outside the workplace, while Ventilation should also remove and dilute warm, humid air and provide air movement which gives a sense of freshness without causing a draught. If the workplace contains process or heating equipment or other sources of dust, fumes or vapours, more fresh air will be needed to provide adequate ventilation.

Its guidelines say that the further away from comfortable conditions and temperatures whether excessively hot and humid or excessively cold the more people's health comes under stress.

Both are likely to affect productivity, something no employer would want to jeopardise, especially in the current tough operating conditions as businesses struggle to recover following the 2008 recession.

It is not enough to install ducted air heating and ventilation systems. By their nature their job is to draw out impurities from the air, whether it is from dust created by a manufacturing process or just a busy working office environment, or grease and steam created in a busy commercial kitchen or fabric fibres and steam in a laundry.

Sooner or later those deposits will accumulate on the insides of the ducts in the ventilation system, air filters will get clogged up and the result will be a system that is working harder and more expensively by using up more power and energy to achieve the same results.

Or if left neglected they may provide an ideal environment for a variety of bugs to breed and possibly then infect people in the building. On the other hand the deposits can represent a fire risk.

This means that any ducted air system, whether used for heating, cooling or extraction, needs regular inspection and maintenance. They also need regular cleaning.

Specialist commercial cleaning companies exist with staff well-trained in health and safety regulations, safe working practices and equipped with the tools and knowledge to take care of a company's ducted air system.

A regular routine of maintenance and annual system clean to ensure ventilation hygiene is left in capable hands can go a long way towards keeping costs down and productivity up as well as providing companies with reports and records that will prevent expensive repairs being needed and will demonstrate that the company has a robust health and safety regime in place.


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Regular system maintenance and cleaning will ensure ventilation hygiene because a workplace ducted air system controlling heat and air quality is only as good as its maintenance and regular cleaning programme. By Ali Withers.