ASHRAE Journal - July 2013 - 128

IAQ APPLICATIONS
some, hellish mass of air poisoning, death-breeding ﬁlth,
reeking in the ﬁerce sunshine, which gloats yellowly over
it like the glare of a devil whom Satan has kicked from his
councils in virtuous disgust.”4
Enter the engineers, with their knowledge of the importance
of building ventilation and how to get it done. President Bates’
remarks are quite impressive in his focus on ventilating all buildings, not just those where his friends and colleagues worked and
lived. Today, we use the term “environmental justice” to describe
the need to protect all people regardless of race, color, national
origin, or income from environmental and health hazards. The
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has major programs in this
area (www.epa.gov/environmentaljustice/), in which they consider
issues including permitting requirements, waste disposal, air quality standards, water quality and cleanup of contaminated land.
President Bates was way ahead of the curve when he stated
the following:
“You may hold that in the majority of cases the occupant of
a tenement does not desire any ventilation, but this doesn’t
affect the merits of the case. … Every family has the right to
have an abundance of good air, even if they are not aware
of their rights. I hereby suggest that this be one of the
first problems we handle, and, if possible, we secure such
legislation as will compel every person or corporation*
who shall in the future erect a tenement house to connect
each room with an individual ventilating flue, to be not less
than 8 in. internal diameter, round of form, and preferably
of glazed tile, built in the wall of the building.”
This historical discussion serves to remind us that buildings
exist for occupants to work, learn, heal or simply enjoy life. In
our push to reduce energy consumption and negative environmental impacts associated with buildings, it is critical that we
remember why buildings exist.
ASHRAE’s upcoming IAQ 2013 conference, scheduled for
October in Vancouver, is focused specifically on environmental
health in low-energy buildings. Among the submitted papers
is one written by my colleagues, in which the case studies of
ASHRAE High Performing Buildings magazine were analyzed
*They didn’t realize that corporations were people back then.

for their consideration of indoor environmental quality (IEQ).
Despite general agreement that high performance includes good
IEQ, only a small minority of these case studies address IAQ
in any depth or, in some cases, at all.
Based on this review, and other discussions of sustainable
or high performance buildings, ASHRAE and the building
community are focusing mostly on energy efficiency. And of
course we need to do that, and reducing energy may require us
to change our indoor environmental expectations—wider bands
of acceptable thermal comfort, for example. But indoor environmental quality needs to be part of the discussion from day one in
designing efficient buildings and developing energy efficiency
programs, not an afterthought or otherwise an exercise in lip
service. The most cost-effective building efficiency measures
are those that provide for the health, comfort and productivity
of building occupants. I suspect that the tenements referred to
earlier didn’t use a lot of energy per occupant, but they didn’t
do a very good job meeting the needs of the occupants either.
As we move forward to develop and apply technical solutions
to the energy and environmental issues in the built environment,
it is important to occasionally take a look back and remind
ourselves of the wisdom of our predecessors. Speaking of wise
predecessors, Albert Einstein had a very similar message to that
of President Bates when he said the following:
“Concern for man himself and his fate must always form
the chief interest of all technical endeavors, ... in order
that the creations of our mind shall be a blessing and not
a curse to mankind. Never forget this in the midst of your
diagrams and equations.”

Epilogue
Another unrelated, but very interesting, issue came up at this
same 1895 meeting: “A question that raised considerable discussion was whether members of the society should demand pay for
their services when they prepare plans for architects. Mr. Jellett
of Philadelphia said he already adopted the plan of demanding
pay, and found that the result was more than satisfactory for
him. He advised every member to do so likewise.”1 All of my
consulting engineer friends thank you Mr. Jellett!

References
1. The New York Times. January 23, 1895.
2. Veiller, L. “New York’s New Building
Code” Charities Review 9 (1899-1900),
388–391.
3. DeForest, R. and L. Veiller, eds. 1903.
“The Tenement House Problem: Including
the Report of the New York State Tenement
House Commission, in two volumes.” Volume
I. New York: MacMillan.
4. Limmer, R., A.S. Dolkart. “The Tenement as History and Housing.” www.thirteen.
org/tenement/eagle.html.

www.info.hotims.com/44634-4

128

ASHRAE Journal

Andrew K. Persily, Ph.D., is vice-chair
of ASHRAE’s Standing Standards Project
Committee 189.1
July 2013

ASHRAE Journal - July 2013

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