Making Clean Air a Priority for Healthcare Residents and their Caregivers

Why Indoor Air Quality is Critical to Quality of Life

A CASE STUDY

At a nursing home in Tennessee, staff members were experiencing health issues every time they entered the building. They reported headaches, coughing, runny noses, and other allergy-like respiratory symptoms.

The problem? Mold. The nursing home needed to act quickly to protect the quality of life for staff and residents, and it called GHP to help. Persistent dampness and mold in buildings negatively affect indoor air quality. Left untreated, these issues can quickly lead to problems such as chronic respiratory diseases, among the leading cause of death and disability across America, according to the Pan American Health Organization. 

GHP’s job was to determine the presence of mold in the nursing home, find the source, and provide solutions.

Project Highlights

Timeline:

  • 1 day for on-site sampling

  • 2–3 working days to receive the results of the air quality analysis

  • Up to 2 weeks for remedial work

Budget:

  • $4,500 for sampling and initial reporting

  • $20,000–25,000 for cleaning and other remedial work

Project Scope:

  • Determine potential issues with indoor air quality (IAQ) for residents and their caretakers

  • Sample air quality and map locations across the facility

  • Report on test outcomes and offer solutions for improvement and remediation

Project Outcomes:

  • Presented thorough results to the client in less than 1 week

  • Identified main sources of air quality issues across 27 air samples

  • Analyzed 25+ different mold spore counts, with 20–25% of the samples showing elevated spore counts

 

Client

The client operates several residential healthcare facilities across Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, the Carolinas, and Kentucky. The company provides assisted living facilities for seniors who continue to live independently, as well as full-service nursing home care. Meeting residents’ health needs is a priority across the business, including its facilities.

 

Challenges and Objectives             

GHP’s tasks included air analysis to identify the sources of potential issues. In addition, our team considered options for remediation.

The initial goal was to determine whether residents and caregivers were breathing clean air or not. In a climate like Tennessee’s, mold spores can easily take hold and grow indoors, even with proper hygiene. Symptoms like those experienced by staff are often the first sign that testing is needed. Residents may not notice these symptoms quite so easily as many stay inside for much of the day. That means no clear distinction exists between symptom-free time and the time when they may be dealing with lower air quality.

Proving the presence of mold is relatively simple, but it is harder to determine what is an acceptable level. The state of Tennessee does not set limits that GHP could refer to in order to classify the results. In the absence of regulatory limits, the team decided to reference industry standards and compare results to samples of outdoor air.

Working in an occupied facility also created its own challenges. The team had to work around residents and tread carefully to answer their questions without creating undue alarm.

 

Solution

GHP collected 27 random samples throughout the facility. This relatively large sample size allowed the team to cover a wide range of areas. Starting in unoccupied communal areas, the team used a specialized pump to collect air samples and look for 15–25 different mold species. The team also considered comfort parameters. These include the temperature of a room, relative humidity, and CO2 and CO levels.

GHP worked with the client to take samples in unoccupied rooms in order to minimize disruption to residents. In addition, we also sampled behind-the-scenes areas of the facility, such as the kitchen.

Once collected, samples went to a laboratory for a thorough analysis. The GHP team then used those results to inform what solutions to pursue.

 

Results

GHP’s analysis revealed a clear picture. Of all samples taken, 20–25% showed high levels of one particular type of mold known as penicillium aspergillus. Senior Project Manager, JP McCarley explains:

“When we find this type of mold spore in the U.S., it means that the HVAC system is out of balance. It is not pulling in as much outside air as it should, causing unconditioned outside air to enter the building in other areas.”

IAQ professionals call this a negative building. The HVAC system does not pull in enough outside air, and the resulting negative pressure pulls in outside air through doors, windows, and any cracks and crevices in the exterior walls. Mold spores can infiltrate the building in this unfiltered and unconditioned air, as can excess humidity. Getting rid of the mold spores involves first balancing the HVAC system to eliminate the negative pressure, then cleaning the ducts and any other areas where mold has taken hold.

Once done, we advise the facility on preventative maintenance items that they can include in their regularly scheduled building maintenance program. Taking these steps results in residents and their caregivers enjoying clean indoor air.

 

Conclusion

GHP’s work led to a healthier indoor environment for the nursing home’s residents and employees. The samples the team collected helped identify what type of mold the facility had and what action was required to fix the issue.

“Because we combine environmental and architectural services, we can do forensic work and figure out where leaks are coming from, whether that be air or water infiltration,” McCarley says. “That full service makes GHP a one-stop shop for all the customer’s needs.”

Having high-quality indoor air helps avoid potentially life-threatening chronic respiratory illness.

Regularly scheduled testing allows building owners and managers to stay on top of indoor air quality conveniently and cost-effectively and ensures that residents do not encounter problems.

 

To find out more about regular air quality testing, read A Guide To Indoor Air Quality or talk to a member of the GHP team.

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A Guide To Indoor Air Quality (IAQ)