PBP accuse government of ignoring importance of ventilation in fight against Covid
People Before Profit will bring their Workplace Ventilation (Covid-19) Bill 2021 before the Dáil on Wednesday.
“Speaking at the launch of the bill Limerick People Before Profit representative Cian Prendiville, who helped draft the bill, said: “The uptake of vaccines in Ireland has been extremely successful with almost everybody who was offered a vaccine taking it but as we have one of the highest rates of Covid-19 infection in Europe, a vaccination strategy alone is not enough to keep our most vulnerable people safe.
“A “Vaccines Plus” strategy of Prevention (masks, ventilation, hygiene), Vaccination and Control (PCR and antigen testing, backward and forward contact tracing, supported isolation), as well as building a properly resourced National Health Service is needed to keep people safe and avoid further lockdowns.
“Ventilation is key to the fight against Covid-19 and to keep people as safe as possible in their workplaces. We have known since September 2020 that Covid is an airborne virus, and yet the government has done nothing to ensure that proper ventilation is present in workplaces.
“Ignoring the dangers brought about by a lack of ventilation has led to outbreaks in schools, restaurants, hospitals and nursing homes here in Limerick.
“This Bill addresses the ventilation issue in a clear and enforceable way. We are calling on all parties in the Dáil to support this Bill so that we can ensure clean air in the workplace and so that we can protect not just workers but customers and service users too from Covid infection.”
The Bill seeks to give workers the ‘right to clean air’ by imposing minimum ventilation standards in workplaces based around CO2 levels. It effectively creates minimum fresh air standards and would give employees the ability to request health and safety inspections.
The Bill defines clean air as having fewer than 900 ppm of CO2 - and puts the onus on employers to achieve this by whatever means possible and/or to install air filtration. (Employers would still also be subject to existing health and safety laws on minimum standards of heating for a comfortable workplace.) The rationale for doing this is that almost every building where people gather aside from private homes is someone’s workplace.
The Bill also empowers the Health and Safety Authority to measure clean air in the workplace and to issue improvement or prohibition notices as appropriate - similar to what happens to restaurants that breach food safety rules. It empowers workers to request that the HSA carry out an inspection of the air in their workplace. This aims to address a major flaw in existing health and safety legislation, namely that it is solely up to the HSA which workplaces it chooses to inspect.
The party accused the government of ignoring the importance of ventilation in the fight against Covid-19.
Orla Hegarty, Assistant Professor at the UCD School of Architecture and former Member of the Expert Group on the Role of Ventilation in Reducing Transmission of COVID-19, said: “Making indoor air as clean as it is outdoors can stop the spread. Ventilation & filtration work for every variant (known & unknown) and also reduce other airborne illnesses such as colds & flu, & also reduce pollution, allergies and asthma. HEPA filtration is proven technology, used in operating theatres to prevent infection and in factories making computer chips & medical devices. Clean air standards can keep all buildings open for the long term and restore confidence- in the same way that they do for water quality, food hygiene & fire safety".
