Thick air indoors
Headaches, fatigue, lack of concentration, loss of performance - too much carbon dioxide in rooms can affect health. The Institute for Occupational Safety and Health of the German Social Accident Insurance (IFA) and the Unfallkasse Hessen (UKH) have therefore developed an app, the "CO2 Timer", which determines the correct time and frequency of ventilation for every window-ventilated room - in schools, offices, seminar rooms or even in private environments.
Human respiration is the main source of CO2 indoors. In low concentrations, CO2 is non-toxic, but it impedes oxygen uptake in the body. Elevated CO2 levels in the ambient air can therefore lead in humans, for example, to Headache lead. Problems occur above all where many people are together for long periods in closed, relatively small rooms - where performance, concentration and well-being then often suffer.
"Regular ventilation is the simplest protective measure against the effects of too much CO2," says Dr. Simone Peters, a hazardous substances expert at the IFA. "Unfortunately, this is often forgotten in the heat of the moment, or people simply ventilate far too infrequently."
The remedy is to be found in the new free CO2 timer, which the IFA has developed together with the UKH for Android and Apple has developed. Based on the number of people, length of stay and room volume, the app calculates the expected CO2 concentration and specifies when and how often ventilation should take place. The calculated time can be set as a timer to remind people to ventilate.
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