Irish Schools Ventilation Progress

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Purpose of site

Given COVID-19 is Airborne and the world is pushing to better ventilate schools for long term student and teacher health, we’re tracking the progress for that in Ireland. This is ahead of government effort to do the same. If government starts to track this work, this effort will continue because that effort might be weak.We’re guided by 33 profs and PhDs who are pushing for a policy change in a March 2024 article on Science.org: Mandating indoor air quality for public buildings. Not only active ventilation (which should be mechanical heat recovery type in this age), but air filtration/purification too and CO2 monitoring to drive ventilation levels, as CO2 inside is a proxy indicator for COVID risk. As it happens the WHO also have a 2023 airborne risk assessment guide

Know that other diseases are airborne too: Measles (studies 1 2 3 4), Influenza, RSV and TB. The same ventilation and air filtration measures reduce transmission of those too.

When we say student and teacher health, we’re wanting absences to go down too. If we lower transmission in schools, we reduce multi-generation transmission too, as kids bring infections home to parents. With lowered transmission, we also reduce long COVID, where the worst sufferers have disappeared from education and the workplace.

In the Irish Examiner

Opinion: Sick of your kids being sick? Clean air in schools may be the answer

(OCT, 2023 - JULIA COREY AND ORLA HEGARTY)

Leaderboard

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Ventilation grade breakdown for schools in Ireland:

Official Republic of Ireland School Ventilation Policy

Schools should follow the guidelines provided by the Department of Education, which emphasize the importance of good ventilation to reduce the risk of airborne virus transmission.

Published in 2021, Guidance on Ventilation in Schools and still online in 2024. The linked PDFs are a solid discussion of ventilation, air filtration/cleaning and CO2 monitor as a proxy risk indicator. For Ireland, between mid April and late October, the opening windows provides some benefit. This isn’t likely to be workable in the winter for temperature reasons. Nor if the school as adjacent to a very busy road (diesel fumes), and other particulate matter like that from fireplaces.

A prior government page - https://www.education.ie/en/Covid-19/ - was taken down in 2021, but an archived version can be seen here. Note: the page never talked of ventilation, air-filtration, etc.

Ireland’s Health and Safety Authority (HSA) published a new code of practice for indoor air quality for 2023, that’s for workplaces and classrooms.

Irish School Districts:

Site ownership

This site is edited by volunteers who’re interested in accelerating the work to complete the adequate ventilation of schools in Ireland. This effort was not commissioned by education authorities or government.

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