Engineered Systems - April 2008 - (Page 61)

ADVERTISEMENT ATTENTION ASHRAE MEMBERS! – VOTE NO In early May 2008, you can expect to receive the annual ASHRAE ballot electronically or by mail. We are told that a series of questions related to ventilation posed by ASHRAE management and approved by the Board of Directors (BOD) will be included, similar to a membership petition. At this writing, we do not know if ASHRAE will provide us with a full and fair opportunity to address our concerns along with those questions. We believe the questions as stated may well subvert the intent of the 1999 membership petition on ventilation standards submitted by hundreds of concerned ASHRAE members, and that was easily approved by the members, and has remained in force since then. This was the only successful membership petition at ASHRAE in more than a century. This ad is paid for and supported by a group of 30 individual ASHRAE Members and Fellows, most of whom are HVAC practitioners. We are concerned about the BOD questions that we believe will tend to confuse and obscure the intent of the 1999 petition. The ASHRAE questions are in bold below and our concerns are in italics. The background for the BOD recommendation for each ASHRAE question will be included with the ballot and is not repeated here. Before answering those questions, please consider our concerns. We believe the BOD questions are worded in a confusing or ambiguous way that members who have an opinion will not know whether a YES or NO vote even supports their views. The Board recommends a vote of yes for all questions. We recommend a no vote for each question. Thus, we consider that the ASHRAE questions are not suitable for presentation to the membership. Question 1 Should ASHRAE Standards and Guidelines contain health-based limits for pollutant concentrations only when those limits have previously been issued by nationally or internationally recognized health authorities, e.g. U.S. EPA, OSHA or the World Health Organization, and for which standardized measurement methods exist? Petition Authors recommend a vote of no, even though either answer might give ASHRAE free reign to develop standards that are not supported by science and that members cannot readily implement. A member who supports the 1999 petition and wants ASHRAE to concentrate on HVAC and stay out of social engineering would not know how to vote on this question. Question 2 Should ASHRAE Standards and Guidelines be allowed to specify means and methods for limiting the concentrations of pollutants normally considered in the design of HVAC systems, even for pollutants that may not have maximum permissible concentration levels set by a recognized health authority or for which standard measurement methods don’t exist? Petition Authors recommend a vote of no, which is problematic because it would leave standards writers with no guidance on the type and extent of engineering analyses included in standards. A yes vote gives standards writers’ unfettered authority to go way beyond HVAC issues and make engineers responsible for occupant health, exposing them to liability. Question 3 Should ASHRAE Standards and Guidelines be precluded from requiring measurement of contaminant or other airborne concentrations or specifying concentration limits that cannot be measured using equipment and procedures in ASHRAE Standard 111, or are not covered by other consensus Methods of Test or are not measurable using equipment that is common in building ventilation assessment? Petition Authors recommend a vote of no, even though it might give ASHRAE free reign to impose standards that members cannot readily implement. The wording of this question is at the same time way too broad and excessively narrow. ASHRAE should neither limit testing unrelated to testing and balancing nor seek to impose Standard 111 beyond its intended scope and purpose. Question 4 Should ASHRAE Standards and Guidelines strive to provide health, comfort and/or occupant acceptability consistent with ASHRAE policy? Petition Authors recommend a vote of no, even though it makes no sense. It says ASHRAE should ignore its own policies. A yes vote, (1) creates unknown liability for ASHRAE members to anyone who claims a health problem and blames it on the building environment, and (2) allows the creation of standards outside of ASHRAE’s core scope. Question 5 Should ASHRAE Standards and Guidelines be permitted to contain factors for use in design calculations, such as mixing efﬁciencies and air change effectiveness, as long as it is the consensus of the standards writing body that these factors are important to providing acceptable indoor air quality? Petition Authors recommend a vote of no. ASHRAE Standards are viewed as authoritative documents which are based upon scientiﬁc fact, methodology and proven results. By voting no, you will be stating that the use of unproven methods or outcomes have no place in ASHRAE Standards. There are no practical methods for measuring mixing efﬁciencies or air change effectiveness. Concerned ASHRAE Members, Gil Avery, PE, FASHRAE, gila@kele.com

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Engineered Systems - April 2008

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