As People Return To The Office, They Need To Feel Safer Indoors. One Company Has A Proactive Solution

Owners of office buildings, shops, restaurants and even major sports stadiums are all facing the same challenge right now: How can I safely bring people back to my facility? More Americans are receiving the Covid-19 vaccine, but it will take more than a shot to make people feel safe again, and building owners will need to go that extra mile to provide peace of mind. 

Some building owners have been doing just that, by employing a creative solution that makes the air inside their facilities cleaner, fresher and safer. 

Over 7,500 companies globally — from Google and Gensler to Empire State Realty and Columbia Properties to the National Football League, Goldman Sachs, Tower 45 and Hilton — have installed bi-polar ionization indoor air quality technology from AtmosAir Solutions of Fairfield, Connecticut. 

“We want to make the invisible visible,” AtmosAir CEO and President Steve Levine said. “Building owners, employers and business owners want to keep their tenants, employees and customers safe. These tools can help them do that, and people can tell the difference — they breathe better and notice less pollution and odors.”

Levine and his team have created an indoor air cleaning and monitoring solution that helps freshen indoor air. AtmosAir’s patented AtmosAir Bi-Polar Ionization tube cleans and sanitizes indoor air by regularly dispersing positive and negative ions into a space. The solution can be added to any existing HVAC system, making it simple to install in both new and older buildings. 

These ions break down volatile organic compounds — harmful particles that can be found in cleaners, paints, aerosol sprays and other common items — as well as odors, mold spores and, most importantly in today’s world, viruses. 

Tests performed by Microchem Laboratory, one of the world’s preeminent laboratories for testing sanitizing products registered with the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration, confirmed that the presence of the coronavirus was reduced by 99.92% within 30 minutes of exposure to AtmosAir Solutions BPI technology.

Levine said that this technology was inspired by the crisp, fresh air that can be found on the tops of mountains. 

“At high altitudes, there is a natural conductivity in the air caused by negative and positive ions,” Levine said. “You can measure the ion content at the top of the mountain and see that it’s very plentiful, but as you come down the mountain, the ions have been depleted by pollution and emissions. When you get inside a building filled with people, it plummets even further. We’re putting those ions back into indoor air.”

The company also offers monitoring tools that allow building owners to monitor and measure their air quality in real time.  

“Our competitors are using filters and UV lights to clean the air, which is more passive, while we are actively attacking contaminants in the space, rather than just reacting to them,” he said. “We also believe this has the potential to create a more sustainable way to clean indoor air.” 

The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers standards require that all commercial buildings bring in a certain amount of outdoor air to keep the air inside fresh. All that outside air needs to be heated or cooled, which can drastically impact a building's energy usage. Levine said AtmosAir is trying to create cleaner air inside of a building that can be recycled, reducing the need for outside air and the costs that come with conditioning it. 

Looking ahead, Levine sees no reason to believe that the demand for indoor air cleaning solutions will diminish as the pandemic begins to wind down. He also said that as we enter the age of the Internet of Things, when people will be able to control everything from their door locks to their apartment temperatures on their cellphones, the time to invest in an air cleaning solution with real-time monitoring tools is now. 

“Today’s tenants are demanding more from their buildings: more transparency, more sanitization, they want to know what the air quality is, what the particle levels are and what the VOC levels are,” Levine said. “We offer tools that can not only give them better air quality, but also give them that transparency.”

This article was produced in collaboration between AtmosAir and Studio B. Bisnow news staff was not involved in the production of this content.

Studio B is Bisnow’s in-house content and design studio. To learn more about how Studio B can help your team, reach out to studio@bisnow.com.