UV/UVC in Commercial Buildings: A Research Proposal Essay

Running head: UV/UVC IN COMMERCIAL BUILDINGS1
UV/UVC in Commercial Buildings: A Research Proposal
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UV/UVC in Commercial Buildings: A Research Proposal
Traditionally, commercial unit design has accounted minimally for air quality controls indoors. In urban spaces, air pollution, primarily from vehicle exhaust emissions and industrial activity, inform design and deployment of air controls. In rural spaces, meanwhile, attention to indoor hygiene and sanitation practices is ad hoc and,often responsive to, as opposed to being
predictive of, emerging air quality challenges. The sight of sunlight seeping indoors and air drafts blowing curtains is perhaps a classic image in promoting units for potential customers. The unprecedented development in design innovations, dramatic climate changes and accelerating spread of infectious diseases and viruses have, however, introduced radical changes to air quality controls indoors, particularly in commercial settings.
Transparency has come to assume an increasingly, design speaking, dominant norm in unit concepts and layouts (consider floor-to-ceiling picture windows) and is, metaphorically, suggestive of a more hygienic and “airy” space. This shift in design concept has, indeed, actual implementations in air control practices using innovative methods. For instance, UV and UVC installations are now in wider use to provide more reliable air controls in closed and damp areas (Bahnfleth et al., 2013; Liu et al., 2017), medical facilities (Card et al., 2020; Matys, Grzech-Leśniak & Dominiak, 2020), water and/or food processing plants (Levetin, Shaughnessy, Rogers
* Scheir, 2001) and animal facilities (Eisenlöffel et al., 2019). The growing adoption of UV/UVC HVAC-compliant applications and devices, has, moreover, made UV/UVC more standardized as a practice of choice for a diversity of commercial and industrial facilities and organizations. Indeed, regulation might have spurned commercial and industrial entities to adopt UV/UVC to manage air quality in more environmentally-friendly and safer workplace (Menzies,
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2003; Rodgers & Saputa, 2017) more quickly. Then again, utility of and increasingly cost-effectiveness of UV/UVC applications and devices in commercial facilities and organizations are making such innovations mainstream. The impact of poor air quality on workers, particularly in industrial and crowded spaces, is, already established in a growing body of literature, including, for instance, serious cardiovascular complications (An et al., 2018). Undisputedly, COVID-19 has made loud and clear air quality indoors as an indispensable measure. The flow of air in closed spaces, particularly spaces not adequately protected against bacteria/fungus/germ proliferation, shows, given more recent growing cases of COVID-19 infections in cramped spaces, why UV/UVC offers a kiss of life to commercial facilities wary of mounting costs of sanitation and enhanced safety and precautionary measures to keep COVID-19 in check (Guo, 2020). Moreover, UV/UVC applications and devices are apparently showing great promise across industries...