National Air Duct Cleaners Association breathes life, simplicity into IAQ management
The National Air Duct Cleaners Association (NADCA) announced that it has formed an alliance with Aircuity, Inc. in order to respond to a rise in health problems attributed to poor indoor air quality (IAQ). The goal of the alliance is to help property owners and managers better control IAQ in commercial spaces, including office buildings, healthcare facilities, schools, and light industrial buildings.
The Aircuity IAQ Evaluation System is comprised of a portable air monitoring and sampling unit, a web-based reporting system and an artificial intelligence-based IAQ diagnosis system. Taken together, many experts consider the Aircuity system to be the most intelligent air quality monitoring system to hit the market. The system has already earned a prestigious R&D 100 Award for most technologically significant new product in 2002, joining past award recipients like the automatic teller machine, the fax machine and the LCD display.
NADCA chose Aircuity to help its qualified HVAC system hygiene professionals expand their service offerings. Specifically, NADCA-certified contractors now have the ability to monitor temperature, relative humidity, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, airborne particles, total volatile organic compounds (TVOC), molds, ozone and radon.
"Our industry has always been vital to the upkeep of workplace and residential air quality," said Aaron Mindel, Executive Director of NADCA. "As such, we aim to constantly improve our ability to identify and react to IAQ problems. This alliance puts NADCA-certified professionals in the best possible position to measure and monitor a building's environmental performance, identify areas of concern or potential concern, and single out the proper remediation methods."
According to the U.S. EPA, sick-building syndrome (SBS) now affects 10 to 25 percent of all buildings. SBS is a condition in which air quality problems cause building occupants to experience various health effects. Over 5 million IAQ problems are reported per year in the U.S. alone.
Department of Energy studies show that improving indoor environments could reduce health-related losses and improve worker performance to save an estimated $30 to $150 Billion annually. Moreover, regular air quality evaluations can prevent unexpected building maintenance costs and reduce overall operating costs. Most importantly, wide-scale IAQ monitoring and diagnosis is a critical step toward solving building-related health problems in the workplace, in our schools, and in our homes.
About NADCA
The National Air Duct Cleaners Association (NADCA) is an active non-profit trade association dedicated to the continuous progression of the Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) hygiene industry. NADCA's air system cleaning standards are not only recognized by the U.S. EPA, but have been adopted worldwide as official ventilation cleaning standards. NADCA is also the certifying organization for the HVAC systems hygiene industry-only NADCA-certified contractors are guaranteed to perform proper and accurate air system cleaning services. For more information, please visit www.nadca.com.
About Aircuity
Aircuity, Inc. is the emerging leader of Internet-enabled indoor air quality monitoring systems and building performance evaluations using artificial intelligence based expert system technology. Aircuity's goal is to revolutionize the process of indoor air evaluation by making the knowledge of a facility's indoor air quality affordable, meaningful, and so simple to obtain that it will become available for every building. For further information please contact Steve Hague at (617) 243-3414, via email at [email protected], or visit the website at www.aircuity.com.
