Peter Dyment, Camfil's technical manager, and Chris Ecob, the company's director responsible for molecular filtration, helped formulate CIBSE's new technical memorandum (TM) – ‘Health and well-being in building services CIBSE TM40: 2020’.
The guidance advises those responsible for the design, installation, commissioning, operation and maintenance of building services on how to deliver buildings that are energy efficient, easy to operate and provide a healthy, comfortable, adaptable and resilient environment.
It also offers assistance on operations and monitoring to allow building performance assessments, gather lessons learnt, and help building services professionals communicate with clients and building occupants.
Mr Dyment said: “TM40: 2020 is a big step forward in terms of guidance on indoor air quality and air filtration because it quotes the new the ISO16890 and ISO10121-2 standards for filter performance testing.
“In conjunction with EN16798-3 standard and World Health Organisation (WHO) limits, the technical memorandum therefore offers a co-ordinated toolkit of standards and a method for calculating required filter performance for buildings.”
He added that he was pleased that TM40: 2020 quoted WHO limits to calculate filter efficiency and clean indoor air quality: “There are many national bodies claiming to offer definitive exposure limits to common air pollutants as well as benchmarking, but the WHO should be the preferred source of information. It is, after all, the global authority on health matters, engaging the talents and experience of the best experts in the world.”
TM40: 2020 replaces a previous version published in 2006.
Dr Marcella Ucci is associate professor in environmental and healthy buildings at UCL Institute for Environmental Design and Engineering, The Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment, University College London.
She said in the foreword to the new standard: “The alignment (and at times the conflicts) between the health and sustainability agendas, alongside the need to conceptualise and deliver wellbeing in a broader and more positive sense, are perhaps amongst the most notable changes in the field since the previous edition of TM40.”
“The broadening of the scope of health and wellbeing, coupled with advances in knowledge and technology, also mean that a lot more information and evidence is now available. It is thus commendable how this TM does not shy away from capturing the enormous amount of knowledge relevant to this field, whilst also striving for a non-reductionist approach.”