California Department of Public Health adopts Healthy Buildings recommendations for California classrooms
November 21, 2024 – Earlier this month, the California Department of Public Health adopted a minimum value of 30 cfm as a new air quality standard for the state’s public school classrooms thanks in large part to a report authored by Dr. Joseph Allen, director of the Healthy Building program, associate professor of Environmental Health, and chair of the Lancet COVID-19 Commission’s Task Force on Safe Work, Safe School, and Safe Travel. In 2022, Dr. Allen co-authored the report, Proposed Non-infectious Air Delivery Rates (NADR) for Reducing Exposure to Airborne Respiratory Infectious Diseases, which outlined new indoor air quality recommendations based on the latest research to help mitigate transmission risk from disease, as well as protecting occupants from air pollution, wildfire smoke, and other airborne toxins. The report advised that buildings should have a cfm value of greater than 30 per person to be considered a healthy building. Cfm measures the cubic feet per minute movement of air around an indoor space.
This new requirement will help to limit student and teacher exposure to infectious diseases, as well as pollutants in wildfire smoke, which is especially prevalent in California.
“This is an historic course correction,” stated Dr. Allen. “Three decades of ignored science show that higher ventilation rates are associated with lower infectious disease transmission, better cognitive function, better math and reading scores for kids in school, less student absenteeism, and fewer missed workdays, just to name the short list of benefits.”
The California Department of Public Health advises that classrooms can upgrade their mechanical ventilation systems, open doors and windows, and add portable air cleaning devices to the room to comply with the 30 cfm requirement.
Read the recommendations from the Lancet COVID-19 Commission’s Task Force on Safe Work, Safe School, and Safe Travel here.
Read Dr. Allen’s Commentary on ventilation standards and indoor air quality here.
Read about the California air quality requirements here and here.
