Thanks to CBS 60 Minutes on Sunday Oct 29 for featuring Harvard’s Joe Allen on IAQ: “The original sin of the pandemic was the failure to recognize airborne transmission”.
Agreed, but there’s more. The REAL ORIGINAL SIN goes back several federal administrations each of which ignored indoor air and failed to fund US EPA’s education and training programs on IAQ in schools/child cares for the decade before the pandemic. Then they failed to fund EPA’s IAQ work during the airborne pandemic, even though EPA is the only federal agency with an office of Indoor Environments with an IAQ program.
Public schools provide 8 billion ft2 of learning space valued at over $3 trillion for 50M children and youth, 40% of whom already have chronic illnesses; without long-term, quality outreach and training, schools are avoiding the task of improving IAQ, that is, they are still not pandemic-ready … or climate ready.
