New specification for ventilation and hygiene from the Building Engineering Services Association (BESA) launched to help minimise risk due to contaminated indoor air quality that impacts both human health and wellbeing.
It has also updated two of its air hygiene training courses to ensure delivery against the new specification and improve safety standards in buildings. The courses are designed so that contractors can advise their clients about ventilation cleanliness to help them meet health & safety obligations and comply with increasingly stringent legislation.
The Association said that TR19® Air ‘Specification for internal cleanliness and hygiene management of ventilation systems’ was designed to address an “urgent need for better cleaning and maintenance of ventilation ducting”. Healthcare professionals have pointed to this as vital for reducing building occupants’ exposure to harmful airborne particulates and pollutants.
“Employers and building managers have an obligation under health & safety legislation to ensure the indoor environment is safe and does not pose a risk to the health and well-being of workers and visitors,” said BESA technical director Graeme Fox.
Indoor air quality was also brought to the forefront by the COVID19 pandemic, with the runoff ensuring that IAQ measures remain high.
“Cleaning ventilation ductwork has often been considered one of those ‘out of sight out of mind’ tasks that can be postponed or avoided entirely to reduce cost, but the pandemic proved just how risky that strategy is,” Fox continued.
TR19 and the growing response for IAQ specification
TR19® Air is the latest update to a specification first developed by BESA in 1991. This was updated as TR17 in 1998 to establish standards for testing, cleaning, and verification of the internal cleanliness of ventilation systems.
The original TR19® guide to good practice for the ‘Internal Cleanliness of Ventilation Systems’, was then produced to cover all aspects of ventilation cleanliness in a single document. However, following several revisions to what quickly became the industry’s primary specification, a separate document ‘TR19® Grease’ was published and focused on the fire risk management of grease accumulation in kitchen extraction systems.
This was developed to help address the specific risks to people and property posed by poorly maintained systems in commercial kitchens, highlighted by fire officers up and down the country.
With this new document, BESA is responding to growing demand for another targeted specification focused on the specific cleaning requirements for air ducts. TR19® Air is also part of a wider campaign to improve indoor air quality (IAQ) in buildings and address the threats posed to human health by airborne pathogens and particulate matter.
BESA’s new specification can be applied to new construction, upgrades and retrofits, and the regular maintenance of ventilation systems. It is useful to building operators, occupants, specifiers, and consulting engineers as well as specialist contractors.
TR19 Air can be downloaded from the BESA website and details of the training courses can be found here.
Content Team
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