75% of Europeans and 54% of the world's population live in cities where air quality is not always optimal.. The problem raised by events like the one being celebrated tomorrow, World Indoor Air Quality Day, is that a large part of people are aware of the pollution from cars or factories, but few reflect on the air in rooms and closed places.. Quite a mistake since, according to our brand, the majority of people spend 90% of their time in closed spaces and, in many cases, crowded together, as we are going to see in the coming weeks when Christmas shopping skyrockets.

Indoor air pollution, to a large extent, is marked by: the concentration of CO2 generated in environments with many people, fungi, batteries, viruses or toxic products. It is proven that poor air quality is harmful to health. For example, it can have a direct impact on lung function, but also on other vital organs.

The poorer the quality of the air a person breathes, the greater their risk of contracting diseases.. Allowing harmful substances to reach the lungs or bloodstream is fatal to health. And, consequently, for the daily life of citizens in all its facets. Poor air quality makes people concentrate worse.

The solution: forced ventilation

Clean air improves sleep, academic or work performance and, according to research from Harvard University, also improves cognitive function. Clean air, therefore, is vital for a healthy life. In this sense, more and more people install ventilation systems in private homes, but they are also very present in offices, schools, hotels or stores where many people gather at the same time.

“Only opening the windows – natural ventilation – does not introduce an air flow large enough to eliminate harmful particles, viruses or the CO2 generated indoors,” recalls Rafael Moral, Managing Director of Systemair Spain. One of the solutions to this problem is to resort to forced ventilation with heat recovery, which not only improves ventilation, but also reduces energy consumption.

In practice, the most energy-efficient way to ensure adequate ventilation is precisely controlled mechanical ventilation.. These systems can exchange stale indoor air with outdoor air in a fully controlled and automated manner.

Air treatment units or air conditioners with heat recovery extract heat from the stale air that has been removed from the building and use it to preheat the fresh supply air that is introduced into the interior space.. This helps reduce the energy needed for heating or cooling. In both homes and businesses this translates into significant savings.

An example: it is 40 degrees outside and inside a space the air is 25 degrees.. The machine is capable of keeping the coolness inside and mixing it with the air from the street.. Thus the outside air would enter the machine with a temperature of approximately 35 degrees and the chiller would need less energy to make it reach 25 degrees.. With this, an efficiency of around 80% is achieved, depending on the type of recuperator.

And these air treatment units have high energy consumption, so it is essential that they be used in the most sustainable way possible.. Finally, air conditioners are equipped with air conditioning to ensure that the supplied air is free of particle contamination.

It is important to trust brands with extensive experience in improving indoor air quality. This is the case of Systemair, a company that has been improving people's health for 50 years thanks to ventilation, air treatment and heating products.