#51 | Breathing Room: The Case for Clean Air with Plum Stone

Jess Kismet (00:00)

Hello and welcome to the Building Sciology Poddie where we talk about better buildings to live and breathe in. My name is Jess Kismet and I am your host. As always, please follow on your preferred platform if you're enjoying the content and leave a five star review. It helps the show to grow. Today's guest is Plum Stone.

 

Plum is the founder of the Safer Air Project, which is an Australian charity on a mission to get indoor air quality recognized as a critical accessibility and inclusion issue. Plum comes from a health policy background rather than a building science or construction background, which is what we're used to on the show. So she has a different perspective. She also has a very personal lived experience perspective with the impact of poor indoor environments on health.

 

She asks the questions about indoor air quality that the building industry hasn't been asked before and the answers affect every single person who lives or works inside a building, which is all of us. Welcome to the show Plum.

 

Plum Stone (00:54)

Thank you very much for having me Jess, it's great to be here.

 

Jess Kismet (00:57)

Excellent so your background as I mentioned is in health policy and public affairs. What made you look at indoor air quality through the lens of accessibility and inclusion when most people who look at indoor air quality are like engineers? What's your story?

 

Plum Stone (01:14)

So my background is, as you said, in health policy, public affairs. I wrote my undergraduate dissertation in 2004 on SARS and flu pandemics and on learning the lessons of pandemics of the past to prepare for pandemics of the future. I got a master's in public health nutrition and from there I went to work for a shadow health minister. I've always just been really interested in how our

 

to health policy can either exacerbate, can either improve or exacerbate health problems. And from there I ended up working in global public affairs agencies and eventually in-house as head of policy and public affairs for rare cancers Australia. Where I've really sort of spent...

 

my professional life kind of focusing on health equity issues. How do we ensure that people living with rare cancers, for example, get the same level of access to care and treatment that someone with a common cancer? And then of course the pandemic started.

 

And we were infected super early, my family was infected super early. My daughter was three and a half years old at the time and suffered a prolonged status epileptic seizure and was hospitalized. It was 45 minutes before they gave her the medicine that ended the seizure and it was another four hours before she woke up. And I really, didn't

 

Jess Kismet (02:32)

you

 

Plum Stone (02:32)

know if she was ever coming back. I didn't know what deficits there would be. It was, you know, as you can imagine, just a horrible time.

 

Thankfully she got better. She was in and out hospital for a couple of weeks, but thankfully she started to get better. But as she started to improve, I actually started to develop these symptoms myself, these strange kind of symptoms, neurological symptoms, cardiovascular symptoms, and others. And I kept being told I was anxious, which is wonderful thing.

 

happens a lot to women.

 

Jess Kismet (03:02)

Mm. Mm.

 

Plum Stone (03:04)

And the answer was I wasn't, I had developed long COVID. And so that kind of those early sort of months of the pandemic, you know, dealing with this acute impact for my small child, these new onset acute symptoms for myself, but also as a health policy expert, was like, it's a pandemic. You know, like this is super exciting. What do we do? You know, okay, it's airborne.

 

well what do do from a policy perspective for an airborne pandemic? We clean the air. And I just fell absolutely head, you know, all the way down the rabbit hole into learning about

 

air quality, learning about air

 

Jess Kismet (03:50)

Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (03:51)

quality monitoring, filtration, disinfection, all of this kind of stuff that was a totally brand new area for me. But because of the way my brain works from a health policy perspective, I was just fascinated by the fact that we had all of this evidence that shows that we can clean the air. And yet we weren't applying that from a policy perspective.

 

And it just, as public health measures lifted and sort of everybody kind of returned to normal in inverted commas, families like mine with chronic health conditions, and I should add my husband also has a really significant autoimmune condition that means that he needs to have a transplant, for families like mine.

 

suddenly every day, you know, accessing school, accessing the workplace, even accessing healthcare, now posed a risk because we hadn't cleaned the air. So all of these public spaces were now risky to enter. How do we send our child to school safely? How do we attend the workplace safely? How do we send our child to school safely where she doesn't bring home an infection that kills daddy? You know, these just felt like these massive...

 

questions that I couldn't kind of, once I started to sort say, if my child was in a wheelchair, school would be made accessible. And sort of once I started to kind of see it in that light, I couldn't unsee it. It sort of just became this really sort of obvious thing to me that we've never seen air that we share in public spaces.

 

from that light and yet we should have been all along because of course air quality disproportionately impacts people with chronic health conditions. The health impacts for someone with chronic kidney disease can be really significant and even fatal depending on what they've been exposed to. And yet we have various legislative instruments like the Disability Discrimination Act that say all public spaces should be universally accessible.

 

We have workplace health and safety. Your bus cannot cause you harm or make you sick. What about the air? In these instances, what about the air?

 

And so, yeah, unfortunately, it was not something I could put back in a box. I wish I could have, you know, packaged that up and gone, someone else will deal with it. It

 

Jess Kismet (06:21)

haha

 

Plum Stone (06:21)

just became really obvious that, you know, I had the kind of professional skills that meant, you know, I was just fascinated by the health policy and this kind of acute family need, this, you know, maternal instinct to protect my children and that if nobody else was going to do it.

 

I was going to have to. that was really, for me that was how the Safer Air Project started. I couldn't sleep knowing that here was the problem and here was the solution and wouldn't it be great if someone could just put them together and we could all move on. So yeah, that was...

 

Jess Kismet (06:56)

Goodness me.

 

That's a big weight to hold on one person's

 

Plum Stone (07:01)

Mm.

 

Jess Kismet (07:02)

shoulders. But I have to admit that before COVID, I did not think about air as, I know that colds are transmitted through the air and things like that, but I never thought about it as a accessibility issue or

 

Plum Stone (07:15)

Mm.

 

Jess Kismet (07:16)

even, it just didn't feature in my thinking really

 

Plum Stone (07:19)

No, no.

 

Jess Kismet (07:20)

at all.

 

Plum Stone (07:20)

And this

 

is it. So many people, as I sort of started to explore this, should I really found a charity and do this kind of, I started speaking to all of these air quality experts and I would start with indoor air quality as an accessibility issue. And they'd go, huh, I've never thought about it that way, but of course it is. And from what you're saying, you knew that many viruses or pathogens were transmitted through the air, but had never thought about how someone, for example,

 

with cystic fibrosis or someone with cancer would be at increased risk of poor health outcomes from that infection. And of course, people with cancer should be able to safely access society. The thing that they need to focus on is getting better from their cancer. They don't need an infection that stops their treatment.

 

and therefore can lead to progression is obviously really impactful. So yeah, once you start to think about all of these people, and of course people living with chronic health conditions are rare, that one in two Australians lives with a chronic health condition that can increase their risk of poor health outcomes. Think about all the children with asthma, cardiovascular disease, cancer, all of these conditions make up a really very large proportion of the population.

 

They're all at increased risk. Many don't know

 

Jess Kismet (08:45)

Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (08:46)

that. And of course, that's part of the challenge is that many people don't know that they're at increased risk. They might know that they're at increased risk from exposure to, from an infection.

 

but they might not

 

Jess Kismet (08:58)

Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (08:59)

know that it transmits through the air. So, you know, I still

 

Jess Kismet (09:02)

Mm.

 

Plum Stone (09:02)

see people, you know, sanitizing their hands, walking into the supermarket. I, you know,

 

Jess Kismet (09:06)

Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (09:06)

elderly people, and I just wish we could provide them with the information that they need in order to know how to protect themselves from the air.

 

Jess Kismet (09:14)

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And since learning about mould as well, it comes down to not, you know, people can't go on holidays because they can't be sure that the place they're going to go is going to be safe for them and their family, people who are affected by chronic conditions. So could you take us through like a day to day situation for your family so the listener can get a feel for what it's like for someone who

 

with a family that suffers from chronic health conditions that needs to be worried about indoor air quality.

 

Plum Stone (09:47)

Yeah, so for me the biggest worry is school. Schools have long been known as a hotbed for infection. know, something comes into the school and...

 

you suddenly not only do all of the children have it, but it then kind of, you know, the ripple effects out to the household, out to the wider community. So, and

 

Jess Kismet (10:08)

and showcase centres.

 

Plum Stone (10:10)

childcare centres. So, kind of just going back a bit, I guess, to sort of 2020 as I started to kind of realise, well, we can put air purifiers into schools. So, before my kids went back to school, we were in the UK at the time, so September 2020, they first headed back, I started speaking to the school and to

 

daycare because my kids were straddling both. Daycare immediately, yes we'll take the air purifiers, thanks very much, that's very kind. School, no we don't need them. School is safe. And weirdly when we moved back to Australia in late 2021 I started having the same conversations, they were still daycare and primary.

 

And exactly the same thing happened. The daycare were very happy to accept the donations, thanks very much. You know, they're private entities, so it was easier for them to do so. But the public school was not. No, school is safe. It's an equity issue. And I was actually thinking about it as an equity issue recently. It was an equity issue because if one classroom had it and was safe and everybody else was not safe. And I was actually, yeah.

 

Jess Kismet (11:12)

so it's too expensive to buy too many to put in all the classrooms.

 

Plum Stone (11:17)

Yeah, and

 

Jess Kismet (11:17)

Yeah.

 

Plum Stone (11:17)

I was thinking about it actually, it was the wrong, I should have pushed back on it at the time, it's not an equity issue, it's an equality issue. Equality

 

Jess Kismet (11:24)

Hmm.

 

Plum Stone (11:25)

means that you give everybody the same and therefore it was

 

Jess Kismet (11:27)

Mm.

 

Plum Stone (11:28)

not fair from an equality perspective. Equity is where you give people who need more the things that they need. So for a high-risk

 

Jess Kismet (11:33)

Mm. Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (11:35)

family, putting an air purifier into a classroom is not an equity issue, it's an equality issue.

 

Jess Kismet (11:43)

Mm.

 

Plum Stone (11:45)

High-risk children are in fact in every classroom. And I'm based in New South Wales. are, the majority of our schools are naturally ventilated, which basically means that even now, mid-2026, I spend all my time asking my children's classrooms, teachers, to open the windows and open the doors.

 

Jess Kismet (12:11)

Hmm.

 

Plum Stone (12:12)

First thing I do at the start of every year is email the principal and say, can I come and meet my children's teachers so I can explain to them about why ventilation is really important, so that I can explain to them how the air purifiers work, so that I can explain to them, I don't have it on my desk, but how the air quality monitor works and how they can use the data from the air quality monitor to help them ensure that the classroom is properly ventilated. and by the way, the children

 

will be better behaved because the air quality won't be affecting their behaviour. They'll get better scores, they'll have better

 

Jess Kismet (12:46)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (12:48)

learning outcomes because their cognitive functioning won't be impaired. I don't know if you've ever seen the trace of an air quality monitor in a classroom, but it's pretty horrific.

 

Jess Kismet (12:59)

but

 

I have this and I show it off every opportunity. I have one of these,

 

Plum Stone (13:02)

Yeah, yeah, well that's what I was looking for. Yeah, I've got the same.

 

Jess Kismet (13:06)

yeah, and I was going to give it to my kids to take it to their classrooms, but I'm too

 

Plum Stone (13:10)

Yeah.

 

Jess Kismet (13:11)

scared I won't get it back. So I'm too scared they're gonna lose

 

Plum Stone (13:14)

I

 

Jess Kismet (13:15)

it.

 

Plum Stone (13:16)

I sent mine with my children as well and I've also got my daughter

 

Jess Kismet (13:20)

Mm.

 

Plum Stone (13:20)

now has a mini one on her bag. It comes

 

Jess Kismet (13:23)

Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (13:24)

back frequently. I can tell whether she's got her actual teacher or she's got a substitute teacher based on the readings on her

 

Jess Kismet (13:28)

Mm-hmm. Mm.

 

Plum Stone (13:31)

air quality monitor. So if she's got her

 

Jess Kismet (13:33)

you

 

Plum Stone (13:33)

actual teacher, it'll be under a thousand PPM for CO2. If she has a

 

Jess Kismet (13:36)

Yep. Yep.

 

Plum Stone (13:38)

substitute teacher, it'll be over three and a half thousand. And you know, it's a...

 

Jess Kismet (13:41)

Is that

 

Plum Stone (13:42)

Yeah, that's someone said someone said at a conference on Monday that it plateaus like it reaches the maximum the only reason that it plateaus is because they go out for recess and lunch and that's when it drops and then it just keeps climbing there there doesn't appear to be an upper limit so

 

Jess Kismet (13:52)

Mm. Mm. Yeah. Mm.

 

Plum Stone (13:58)

you know classrooms that that is where your your question was about you know how does you know the every day having to send

 

Jess Kismet (14:07)

Mm.

 

Plum Stone (14:07)

my children every day to a place that should be safe

 

under the, you know, we have a duty of care, UN Convention on the Rights of the Child says we have a duty of care to ensure that all children have a safe learning environment. Every single day I send my children into an environment that I know is not safe.

 

because we

 

Jess Kismet (14:29)

Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (14:30)

have no standards for indoor air quality. I don't know if she's got her real teacher or a different teacher. And there's really very nothing I can do about it except try and change it, which is

 

Jess Kismet (14:45)

Yeah.

 

Plum Stone (14:46)

what we're trying to do with Safer Air Project. Someone said to me recently what we were trying to do was too big. And I said.

 

Have you ever tried

 

Jess Kismet (14:56)

Hmm.

 

Plum Stone (14:56)

to consistently get a teacher to open the windows and doors in a naturally ventilated classroom? You know, when the windows and doors are shut, there's no ventilation. And that's the real tragedy about how our schools are ventilated. They're not.

 

It's on the teacher to decide whether the windows are open or closed, whether it's too hot, too cold, too smoky, too windy, too rainy, too noisy. All of these things affect whether or not the teacher decides to open the windows. And that is the ultimate decision as to whether or not the classroom is going to be properly ventilated or not. And you were saying

 

Jess Kismet (15:35)

Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (15:36)

about people with mould.

 

My focus on founding Safer Air Project was obviously from an infection perspective, but as I kind of fell into this, you know, into this world, know, mould is a huge issue and of course a massive issue in schools, but it's also dust and PM, know, particulate matter, huge impact for people living with asthma and of course people with chemical sensitivities and all of these different airborne pollutants.

 

all create accessibility issues because there are all sorts of people who can't physically...

 

those pollutants just impact their health. So

 

Jess Kismet (16:20)

Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (16:21)

cleaning the air, be it for infectious aerosols or for VOCs or PM2.5, we will have a massive impact on health

 

Jess Kismet (16:34)

Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (16:35)

more broadly and on accessibility and inclusion.

 

just by cleaning the air. And so that's

 

Jess Kismet (16:41)

Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (16:41)

what we're trying to achieve is a nationally mandated indoor air quality performance standard that can make indoor air safer for everyone.

 

Jess Kismet (16:52)

So that's what you're working on now as a standard.

 

Plum Stone (16:55)

Yeah, we're working, in order to get to the standard, we need to get to the point where the government says they want one.

 

So

 

Jess Kismet (17:04)

Right.

 

Plum Stone (17:06)

we're working more on the policy perspective to push government to act on this. There

 

Jess Kismet (17:12)

Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (17:12)

are a number of avenues, obviously I've already sort of explored with Disability Discrimination Act, Workplace Health and Safety. We saw the new model code of practice for the control of biological hazards was published by Safe Work Australia at the start of this month. And so obviously

 

Jess Kismet (17:27)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (17:29)

that's a really important document.

 

There are lots of opportunities, but what we really need is the government to commit to a national strategy that would lead to the development of a standard.

 

Jess Kismet (17:43)

So quick question, your daughter, is she still suffering from long COVID? Does that ever go away?

 

Plum Stone (17:47)

No, she's thankfully okay. I'm still living with long COVID, so six years after

 

Jess Kismet (17:53)

Okay.

 

Plum Stone (17:53)

my first infection. I'm still

 

Jess Kismet (17:55)

Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (17:56)

living with long COVID. Thankfully, she is okay.

 

Jess Kismet (18:01)

Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (18:02)

But no, mean, for a huge number of children living with long COVID, it has meant exclusion from school, being bed bound.

 

totally dropping out of school and of course it's totally invisible. don't

 

Jess Kismet (18:17)

Yes.

 

Plum Stone (18:18)

see those, and therefore it's really easy to ignore,

 

Jess Kismet (18:23)

Mm.

 

Plum Stone (18:24)

but it's a huge problem.

 

Jess Kismet (18:26)

mm-hmm yeah the the air is invisible and then the problem becomes invisible because those people just kind of disappear yeah

 

Plum Stone (18:33)

Yeah, and of course, so, and there's an extra group

 

of invisibility, is, you you wouldn't know looking at me that I have a disability in the form of a chronic health condition. So it's an invisible

 

Jess Kismet (18:41)

Mm. Mm. Mm.

 

Plum Stone (18:45)

disability that puts me at increased risk from an invisible risk. so it's just,

 

Jess Kismet (18:51)

Yeah.

 

Plum Stone (18:53)

and that's ultimately, I guess, know, just why we haven't done anything about it yet is

 

Jess Kismet (18:58)

Yeah.

 

Plum Stone (18:59)

because it's so easy to just...

 

brush it under the carpet, hopefully not a mouldy carpet, and

 

Jess Kismet (19:04)

Mm. Mm.

 

Plum Stone (19:07)

ignore it, you know? And that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to change that by bringing visibility. We launched a campaign last year called Making the Invisible Visible, and

 

Jess Kismet (19:18)

Yes.

 

Plum Stone (19:20)

it's a huge part of what we're trying

 

Jess Kismet (19:22)

Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (19:23)

to do, because once you see it, once you see air quality as an accessibility and a...

 

Obviously you are newly seeing it as an accessibility issue but I hope you can kind of see

 

Jess Kismet (19:32)

Yeah.

 

Plum Stone (19:32)

that once you see it in that way it's very difficult to unsee it.

 

Jess Kismet (19:38)

Yeah, a lot of this stuff is all the building science stuff, my air tightness and we'll talk about CO2 and particulate matter, all

 

Plum Stone (19:47)

you

 

Jess Kismet (19:47)

of it. Once you see it and once you know how to measure it, you can't unsee it.

 

Plum Stone (19:52)

Yeah.

 

Jess Kismet (19:52)

And so I hope that this conversation sparks some more research for the listener so they can see the problem and not unsee it. But speaking of making things visible, have you heard of the birdie monitors?

 

Plum Stone (20:03)

Yes, so I have one in my son's classroom.

 

And the thing

 

Jess Kismet (20:09)

good.

 

Plum Stone (20:10)

I love about Birdie, and I was very fortunate, I went to the UN in September for the first ever global pledge for healthy indoor air, and I got to meet all of my IAQ heroes, including Andreas

 

Jess Kismet (20:21)

Yep, though.

 

Plum Stone (20:22)

from Birdie. So

 

Jess Kismet (20:24)

awesome.

 

Plum Stone (20:24)

I got a Birdie when it was on Kickstarter, because I just thought, what

 

Jess Kismet (20:29)

huh.

 

Plum Stone (20:29)

a great monitor.

 

Jess Kismet (20:31)

Yep.

 

Plum Stone (20:32)

And because of the pushback that I was getting from schools around the Aranet which they didn't like the

 

Jess Kismet (20:38)

Hmm.

 

Plum Stone (20:39)

data, they didn't like you being able to see the data because I think they felt that they were at risk. If you knew that it was bad, yeah, it's too accountable, without kind of realising

 

Jess Kismet (20:44)

It's too accountable. You've got to be accountable.

 

Plum Stone (20:49)

that you're liable anyway, just because you're not monitoring

 

Jess Kismet (20:53)

Get it.

 

Plum Stone (20:54)

it doesn't mean you're not liable. But the birdie was really, the schools were happy to take it.

 

So I gave it to my son's classroom and my son was only four at the time but

 

Jess Kismet (21:03)

Mm.

 

Plum Stone (21:03)

he was able to get the windows and doors opened on the basis

 

Jess Kismet (21:07)

Mm.

 

Plum Stone (21:08)

of the birdie's fallen off its perch, please can you, you know, jumping up and down, the birdie's fallen off and all of his little friends would jump up and

 

Jess Kismet (21:15)

Yeah.

 

Plum Stone (21:15)

down when the birdie fell off and so I said to Andreas when I met him I was so grateful for a tool that enabled equity for children.

 

Jess Kismet (21:27)

Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (21:27)

It enabled a child to be able to have some autonomy in that decision making. What a great tool. did see them overnight. They've

 

Jess Kismet (21:31)

Power Agency.

 

Plum Stone (21:36)

just won an award for their design. It's fantastic. It really is super simple, super cute.

 

Jess Kismet (21:43)

Yep, that's great. That's awesome. I didn't see that. have to have a look. For the listener who doesn't know what birdie is, it's a indoor air quality monitor. It monitors carbon dioxide. And it's a little canary. It's based off the canary in a gold mine story where if it's a little bird that sits on the perch, you attach it to the wall. And then if the carbon dioxide gets, is it 1,000 parts per million or have they dropped it to 800? 1,000 parts per million.

 

Plum Stone (22:07)

Yeah, no, it still is a thousand.

 

Jess Kismet (22:11)

Okay if the indoor carbon dioxide in any space increases above a thousand parts per million the little birdie goes and dies which is really effective for classrooms because the children as you have explained get upset that the birdie is dead and let's open the window let's reduce the carbon dioxide levels in this space and the birdie comes back to life

 

Plum Stone (22:34)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

 

Jess Kismet (22:35)

So if that idea appeals to you, I'll put a link in the show notes or Google it and you can get a hold of one for your child's classroom or for your work environment even or your house. They're a really good visual. Yeah, okay. So accessibility, you have talked about the classroom not being as accessible for people with chronic health conditions as...

 

people who don't and you've used a ramp analogy in the past you mentioned about in the beginning of the conversation about wheelchairs. What is the equivalent of a ramp for a building when it comes to indoor air quality?

 

Plum Stone (23:13)

So I like to think about it as standards, right? So again, just going back to the Disability Discrimination Act. Alongside the Disability Discrimination Act is the premises standards. And the premises standards define the accessibility features as necessary for all public spaces. So that's the angle of the ramp and the height of the button and the assistive audiology and Braille and other assistive tools.

 

What I see as missing is an air quality standard, a performance standard that says this is safe, the air is safe for everyone.

 

Jess Kismet (23:51)

Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (23:52)

So that's what we're trying to achieve, is how do we make sure that we have...

 

that all public spaces have safe indoor air so that there was this kind of notion that people living with chronic health conditions, do you remember early in the pandemic that know the press conferences would sort of say oh 66 people died but don't worry they had chronic health conditions and it sort of othered people right it sort of it was meant to kind of reassure you that don't worry you're fine and these people these other people they're not out and about.

 

Well, the reality is obviously, as we've spoken about in terms of chronic health conditions, people are everywhere. And what we in, you know, in all workplaces, classrooms, etc. So all public spaces therefore need to be able to ensure that people can breathe safely without risk of harm. And the only way to achieve that, you know, obviously you and I are big fans of monitors.

 

Jess Kismet (24:53)

Mm.

 

Plum Stone (24:53)

But what

 

are we trying to get to? Like, what's the number that we're aiming for? So that's what we're working towards is a performance standard that effectively sets a safe standard. Kind of like a food hygiene standard. Like if you got to the restaurant and saw it had a one-star food hygiene rating, you might not order the eggs. You might go next door to the place that had the five-star rating. It's the same

 

Jess Kismet (25:17)

Yep.

 

Plum Stone (25:18)

sort of thing. It's just about making it visible so that people can see.

 

and then make informed decisions about whether or not they're going to spend time in that space. So the standards effectively become the ramp.

 

Jess Kismet (25:34)

Yeah, okay, and that would include like a carbon dioxide limit and things like that as an example.

 

Plum Stone (25:40)

So obviously

 

it's hugely open to debate as to what that

 

Jess Kismet (25:45)

Yeah.

 

Plum Stone (25:45)

should include. Obviously we've seen Lydia Morovska's paper in Science published in 2024 which effectively said CO2 PM2.5 CO and ventilation rates. There

 

Jess Kismet (25:55)

Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (25:55)

are also other standards like the Reset Viral Index which has had an upgrade which was about what happens when you add filtration. We obviously have tons of other standards, international

 

the Well Building Institute, Green Star, NABERS all of these organisations already have standards. I'm kind of agnostic around what it should be. I used an example at a conference on Monday. So I mentioned that I went to the UN for the global pledge. So I was sitting there with my Aranet and the CO2 in the space was 1500 parts per million.

 

which was really high, you know, and

 

Jess Kismet (26:40)

Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (26:41)

I would have thought, you know, well, this isn't a very safe space. And as someone with a chronic health condition, know, well, my mask is certainly staying on. But when you go online and you sort of, you know, search, as I sometimes do, you can find that the UN upgraded their filtration in 2020 to Merv 14 filters. So.

 

Jess Kismet (27:02)

Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (27:04)

what does that do to the safety of the space base? So CO2 doesn't tell the full story, but

 

Jess Kismet (27:09)

Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (27:10)

we don't have monitors currently that can adjust for where the space is ventilated. So I think there's

 

Jess Kismet (27:18)

Yeah.

 

Plum Stone (27:18)

a huge gap in terms of...

 

I use an Aranet CO2 monitor as just a base level, it gives me a pretty good indication in a classroom which is naturally ventilated, that's the best number you're going to get. But there are

 

Jess Kismet (27:36)

Yep. Yep.

 

Plum Stone (27:37)

obviously instances where filtration is in place or disinfection technology is in place and that CO2 number isn't telling the full story.

 

I think we have some work to do in terms of what a standard looks like and in terms of the interplay between some parameters. Obviously, ASHRAE 241, which was published, I don't know, it seems like forever ago, is a really good example and it talks about equivalent air changes per hour.

 

Jess Kismet (28:09)

Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (28:09)

And I think we need to get to something similar,

 

but what we need is we need to be able to monitor it. We need a simple way of monitoring equivalent air changes per hour based on the tools and technologies that are in place, which of course is totally dependent on the space.

 

Jess Kismet (28:27)

Yeah, yeah. So this equivalent air changes per hour is that...

 

Like that sounds like a very engineering term.

 

Plum Stone (28:39)

Yeah.

 

Jess Kismet (28:41)

What does that mean?

 

Plum Stone (28:43)

So

 

I guess if you at the most kind of basic level think about a naturally ventilated space, the air changes per hour that you're getting in that space are maybe one to two, maybe then you add... Yeah.

 

Jess Kismet (28:59)

ambient you know about ambient pressure I think it's I

 

think it's four is like the standard

 

Plum Stone (29:04)

I guess it depends whether the windows and doors are open or not. Yeah, yeah.

 

Jess Kismet (29:07)

and where you are in the world.

 

Plum Stone (29:10)

But just for like super basic.

 

Jess Kismet (29:12)

Yep.

 

Plum Stone (29:12)

then you

 

add portable filtration, you know, and if you've added it at the right, you know, meters cubed per hour, you could be adding six air changes per hour just on portable filtration. So, but what does that do to the equivalent air changes? We're probably straying way beyond my ability to explain this. And I would suggest that people should, but

 

Jess Kismet (29:32)

Just trying to get into it. Yeah.

 

Plum Stone (29:35)

the important thing is like, how do you measure that and how do you display

 

Jess Kismet (29:38)

Mmm.

 

Plum Stone (29:39)

it so that, you know, obviously the more air changes per hour,

 

the better.

 

Jess Kismet (29:44)

Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (29:45)

And once you start adding disinfection technology like your upper room UV, you can significantly scale the number of air changes

 

Jess Kismet (29:53)

Mm.

 

Plum Stone (29:54)

and therefore the safety of a space. But again, we don't have a way of monitoring that in an easy way that you can simply look at the device on your table and go, yeah, cool. So that's what I would really like to see. I think that's the next frontier in terms of

 

defining accessible spaces based on the air quality and the tools and technologies that are employed in a specific space is

 

Jess Kismet (30:21)

Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (30:22)

some way of measuring the equivalent air changes per hour.

 

Jess Kismet (30:29)

And do you speak to many engineers and science-based people about this stuff because, you know, there's a lot, there's a difference, big gap between the theory that, the theory and the practice and, you know, your human experience and then what, like the simulations and the engineering side of it. So do you get to collaborate very much with those types of people on this?

 

Plum Stone (30:53)

Yeah, so one of the things that I've always done throughout my career is kind of try to build evidence-based policy recommendations. So everything, all the policy recommendations that we make are based on peer review evidence. So the first

 

Jess Kismet (31:08)

Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (31:08)

thing I did when I founded the Safer Air Project was put together a really strong expert advisory committee. And I'm delighted that we've got

 

Jess Kismet (31:15)

Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (31:16)

people like Lydia Morovska and Professor Jason Monte and Professor Robin Schofield, all of these incredible,

 

credible scientists. But then we've also added lived experience experts because for me the sort of the gap that the Safer Air Project was trying to fill was this translation of scientific evidence into policy.

 

Jess Kismet (31:37)

Mm.

 

Plum Stone (31:39)

Well my experience working in cancer was that if I wanted cancer policy change to happen

 

I'd go down to Canberra and arrange a meeting with the Minister for Health and take people living with cancer down to explain their lived

 

Jess Kismet (31:52)

Hmm.

 

Plum Stone (31:53)

experience of why it was not fair that someone living with breast cancer, for example, should have access to a drug while they had the same genetic mutation and couldn't access the same drug even though their clinician was recommending it.

 

Jess Kismet (32:10)

Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (32:10)

Once

 

that lived experience story gets across and it's no longer just this theoretical problem that we have, Minister, we should really fix this. Here's the evidence.

 

Jess Kismet (32:18)

Mm. Mm.

 

Plum Stone (32:20)

It's the, this is really impacting my life story.

 

that's when you see policy change happen. that's what Safer Air Project was trying to do was to sort of bring together the lived experience with the science and the building engineers. And so what we did in November last year, we hosted our second event in Parliament House. It was called Safer Shared Air, Making the Invisible Visible as part of our campaign.

 

Jess Kismet (32:46)

Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (32:50)

We did with the first session was lived experience. was the CEOs and patient representatives from a number of patient organizations. And then the second session was distinguished professor Lydia Moroska launching the Australian Academy of Sciences indoor air quality report. So Lydia was the lead author on that report as she is an Academy fellow and but it was an Academy. It was an Academy paper and it was really kind of setting out what is the evidence for

 

why we should improve indoor air quality and how and here are the policy pathways.

 

So it was a huge honor to have both Lydia and Anna Maria Arabia, who's the CEO of the Australian Academy of Science, to launch that paper at our event and a number of experts who joined us. But the third session, we also brought together kind of building the building people. we had, you

 

Jess Kismet (33:45)

Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (33:45)

know, we had Jack Nuland from International Well Building Institute, Jorge Chapa from Green Building Council,

 

Jess Kismet (33:50)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (33:52)

Ron Polido from Neighbours, because obviously Neighbours have

 

got huge experience from an energy perspective but also they have the indoor environment quality rating as well.

 

We had the CEO of Facilities Management Australia and someone from Lendlease as well. So really

 

Jess Kismet (34:08)

Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (34:09)

trying to kind of, we're an all comers organization. It's something we want everybody to be a part of because it is a multidisciplinary issue and we all

 

Jess Kismet (34:21)

Yo.

 

Plum Stone (34:22)

have a stake in the outcome of this

 

Jess Kismet (34:24)

Yes,

 

Plum Stone (34:25)

as well.

 

Jess Kismet (34:26)

yeah, multi-pronged attack. I

 

Plum Stone (34:27)

Yeah.

 

Jess Kismet (34:28)

like it. No, that's great. And where do think the biggest resistance is coming from with the work that you're doing?

 

Plum Stone (34:36)

It's a great question. I of, I lie awake at night sometimes wondering who are the people I need to kind of knock out of the way in order to kind of keep moving forward.

 

Jess Kismet (34:44)

Yeah.

 

Plum Stone (34:47)

I think some of the resistance comes from, you we were talking earlier about, you know, CO2 as a measure. There is a bit of resistance on, you know, CO2 as a measure because obviously you have organizations whose, you know, technology.

 

can mean that you can run at higher CO2 levels. You don't have to bring in as much outdoor air. So there's a bit of sort of complex...

 

robust policy discussion happening around, well, you

 

Jess Kismet (35:19)

Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (35:19)

know, how do you do that? And I do think that that's where the biggest friction is, is what should the standard look like? I'm very

 

Jess Kismet (35:25)

Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (35:26)

much on the sort of party of we need to get agreement that we need a standard.

 

Jess Kismet (35:34)

Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (35:34)

Once we have

 

agreed, you know, once the government have agreed that we need a standard, then we can argue about what the standard looks like. But until then,

 

Jess Kismet (35:40)

Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (35:41)

it's a united front to make it happen because I think we can all agree that focusing on adequate or acceptable air quality has probably left us wanting in many areas. And I often think about, you know, sometimes I feel frustrated. What would have happened if...

 

know, safer air project or air quality as an accessibility issue had been recognised 20 years ago. Would we have had the pandemic?

 

Possibly not, because it's largely driven by indoor transmission. If indoor air had been safer, if we had had safer indoor air quality performance standards in place 20 years ago, not only would we have potentially prevented the majority of the negative impacts of the pandemic, we'd be doing so every year on flu. We'd be doing so on annual asthma stats. All of these things, we would just have a natural damper.

 

on the impacts because the air

 

Jess Kismet (36:41)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (36:45)

would just be safer and sometimes I feel frustrated about the fact that it's 2026 and we still don't have what is, can you imagine if we still didn't have clean water? If we were having to advocate for water safety standards, we were having to boil

 

Jess Kismet (36:59)

Hmm.

 

Plum Stone (37:00)

our water at the tap,

 

Jess Kismet (37:02)

Thank

 

Plum Stone (37:03)

or food, we're never sure whether or not the food that you were getting, it just, because it's invisible.

 

it's been allowed

 

Jess Kismet (37:10)

Yeah.

 

Plum Stone (37:11)

to sort of be ignored and yet you know you can't go I was having this conversation with my kids recently you can't go more than three minutes without breathing my children seem to think you can you can't go more than three days without water yeah yeah they're like I can I'll show you

 

Jess Kismet (37:23)

I bet they tried to prove it too.

 

Plum Stone (37:28)

and then but you can't go three days without water you can't go three weeks without food you can't go three minutes without breathing it is so fundamental

 

And yet we haven't had safety standards applied to it. So it's just totally, you know, it's just, it's like the wild west as to what you get. And you know,

 

Jess Kismet (37:46)

Mm. Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (37:47)

one classroom at my kid's school might be really great, another classroom might be terrible. And we just, without

 

Jess Kismet (37:52)

Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (37:53)

monitoring, without making the invisible visible, without monitoring, we can't possibly hope to make it better.

 

Jess Kismet (38:01)

Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (38:01)

And

 

so yeah, that's the thing that I get frustrated about when we get this sort of pushback is starting somewhere would be better than what we have now.

 

Jess Kismet (38:16)

I feel like the aviation industry has got a bit like that. I feel like they need to join this conversation because that's it's not a building but it's it's an enclosure right

 

Plum Stone (38:24)

Mm.

 

Jess Kismet (38:24)

and COVID came from overseas and we catch colds in close enclosed small enclosed spaces much more readily than we do in not so enclosed larger spaces and I've taken my little Aranet on I did a lot of travel last year and I took my Aranet on every plane I went on

 

Plum Stone (38:40)

Mm-hmm.

 

Jess Kismet (38:41)

and

 

Yeah the CO2 in an aeroplane is 2000 parts per million and above for the majority of the flight. I've met some international flights, some domestic flights and yeah it was highest on takeoff and landing and then it settles but yeah it's a there's no I don't know what the ventilation or if there's any filtration in an aeroplane if anyone knows please reach out to me and let me know.

 

Plum Stone (39:09)

So

 

my understanding, and again, I'm going to caveat this with I'm not an expert, but my understanding is that the filtration on an airplane is excellent. Once you are at cruising altitude, it's very good. So yes, is,

 

Jess Kismet (39:21)

Okay, great, that's good to know.

 

Plum Stone (39:23)

is, is like, your most, the most.

 

unsafe times are boarding and taxiing but once you're

 

Jess Kismet (39:30)

Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (39:30)

at altitude the filtration system is working and it's HEPA filtered and it's good but it's a really good example of where a simple CO2 reading doesn't tell the full story because you can't tell that it's being filtered and that's what we need to get to. We need to somehow overcome that problem.

 

And that's why I like the reset viral index. It's reset, obviously, similar to IWBI and other standards.

 

Jess Kismet (40:01)

What's the adibidibidibidibida? The what?

 

Plum Stone (40:04)

International Well-Building Institute, reset, fit well, lead, all of these are examples of kind

 

Jess Kismet (40:11)

Uh-huh.

 

Plum Stone (40:11)

of global.

 

rating tools. Reset have

 

Jess Kismet (40:16)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (40:18)

this one which is a specific, it's a percentage safety score and it sort of,

 

Jess Kismet (40:22)

Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (40:22)

and it effectively defines the safety score from a viral perspective and it's the interplay between CO2, PM2.5, humidity, I can't think of the other one, but basically it sort of puts them all into a thing and you know based on how they all interplay it shoots out a score.

 

You have to kind of, you know, but then the question of course, for that plane example, okay, so you've got slightly high CO2, two and a half thousand, quite high, you know, I don't feel comfortable in that, you know,

 

Jess Kismet (40:53)

Mm. Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (40:54)

there's a lot of rebreathed air. But then you add PM2.5, but if the PM2.5 is zero, is it zero because it's being filtered or is it zero because there's no ambient PM2.5?

 

And

 

Jess Kismet (41:09)

Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (41:10)

that's tricky. So we've got to be able to answer that question as well. And that's

 

Jess Kismet (41:14)

Mmm.

 

Plum Stone (41:14)

why I really want to see this as the big question that we answer. Someone smarter than me can answer. How do we put that into a monitor so that people can know on a plane?

 

this is safe, particularly for really high risk people like my family who have to mask.

 

We shouldn't be relying on respiratory PPE as the last line of defence. should be a systems safety net. RPE is the lowest in the hierarchy of controls for a reason. It's not the best.

 

Jess Kismet (41:57)

Mm. Mm.

 

Plum Stone (41:59)

But how do people who are so high risk and who need to mask for their health and safety, how did they determine the safety of a space if the numbers that they've got in front of them only tell half a story?

 

Thank

 

Jess Kismet (42:14)

So do you feel, Plum, as though the momentum around clean air since like, because there was a whole big thing about it when COVID was happening. Like there was articles being published about how HVAC systems needed to be changed and blah, blah, blah, all about air quality inside, I guess specifically like office buildings and workplaces and hospitals.

 

Do you feel like that momentum is still there? Do feel like it's been sustained or do you feel like it's kind of been forgotten about? Apart from your work specifically,

 

Plum Stone (42:43)

Yeah.

 

Jess Kismet (42:44)

do you feel like in the wider industry it's been dropped or not?

 

Plum Stone (42:49)

I think people have

 

largely forgotten. Again, I was at this conference on Monday and they were talking about how the air purifiers in Victorian schools are now mostly just sitting there unplugged.

 

it would be good to use them. It would be good to keep

 

Jess Kismet (43:06)

So.

 

Plum Stone (43:06)

using them. know, people have kind of,

 

Jess Kismet (43:08)

Yeah.

 

Plum Stone (43:09)

you know, they've seen like the emergency phase of the pandemic has ended and therefore we don't need to worry about this anymore. But actually

 

Jess Kismet (43:18)

Mm.

 

Plum Stone (43:18)

continuing to use the air purifiers would continue to have a benefit. It would continue to stop COVID which is still spreading in our schools, but it would have an impact on flu

 

Jess Kismet (43:27)

Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (43:28)

and RSV and now we're seeing measles cases emerging. So all of those things would be improved.

 

asthma would be improved. So I think it's a shame that people kind of thought it's just a COVID thing and now it's done. It's an all the time thing. We're all still

 

Jess Kismet (43:46)

Hmm.

 

Plum Stone (43:46)

breathing, remarkably, you know, because if we were we'd have a bigger problem and we need to be breathing safe air.

 

all

 

the time. So

 

Jess Kismet (43:59)

Yeah.

 

Plum Stone (44:00)

it is frustrating that there seems to be a lack of urgency around it and also I guess there's

 

Jess Kismet (44:08)

Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (44:09)

a bit of pandemic fatigue and people don't necessarily want to be reminded of those awful days and weeks and months in the early years of the pandemic.

 

It hasn't gone

 

Jess Kismet (44:21)

Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (44:22)

away. It's still here. It's still a thing. It's still having an impact on our health, on our productivity, on our school absences, workplace absences. And it isn't just COVID. It's all the things. So we've

 

Jess Kismet (44:39)

Mm.

 

Plum Stone (44:40)

just had a really bad flu season in the middle of summer.

 

Jess Kismet (44:44)

Mmm. Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (44:46)

All of which would be made better.

 

by getting on top of air quality. So yeah, I do think you're right

 

Jess Kismet (44:54)

Hmm.

 

Plum Stone (44:55)

that the urgency has tapered, but I think we are wrong to take our foot off the gas on this one. I think we should be doubling down and making sure it never happens again. What happens

 

Jess Kismet (45:07)

Mm.

 

Plum Stone (45:07)

when the next variant emerges that's a really bad one and suddenly actually...

 

you know, suddenly we're back in March 2020, civil territory. What happens when something different comes, know, next avian influenza or, you know, all the like. It doesn't have to be as

 

Jess Kismet (45:27)

Mm.

 

Plum Stone (45:27)

dramatic and disruptive as 2020 because we could make a difference now and improve our air quality to make sure that it never happens again. And it would

 

Jess Kismet (45:41)

Mm.

 

Plum Stone (45:41)

improve.

 

productivity, would improve learning outcomes, would improve a whole heap of things. We've actually been really focused on the return on investment arguments for air quality. That seems to be the thing that will maybe sway government. They're very keen on productivity. And of course, anybody working

 

Jess Kismet (46:00)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (46:03)

in indoor air quality knows that there's a huge return on investment to be achieved with...

 

with air quality if we just choose to do so. But that's, we're at that point, right now it's a choice to not act. We need to change that. We

 

Jess Kismet (46:20)

Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (46:20)

need to make it a choice to do something. What's the cost of inaction versus the return on investment? And that's the switch we need

 

Jess Kismet (46:24)

Mm. Mm-hmm. Mm.

 

Plum Stone (46:29)

to flick. And so that's what we'll be doing this year.

 

Jess Kismet (46:31)

Mm.

 

Yep and the return on investment you're talking about productivity in workplaces, learning outcomes for school students, health outcomes for people in hospitals, that's what you mean right? Yeah.

 

Plum Stone (46:42)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And it's huge.

 

One of the, there's a really good stat, which I'm not going to be able to remember off the top of my head, but it's around...

 

On Monday as well, there was the New South Wales parliamentary hearings for the inquiry into clean indoor air. And one of the witnesses

 

Jess Kismet (47:00)

Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (47:00)

on Monday gave a stat around what it would cost to mechanically ventilate all schools in Australia. And he said that it would be offset within a couple of years from the reduced... Since 2019, we've seen a significant increase in the number of substitute teachers that are required.

 

in order to cover absences from teachers due to illness, that improving HVAC, mechanically ventilating all schools in Australia, would be paid for by simply going back to 2019 levels of teacher absenteeism.

 

Which is a, like, it's just

 

Jess Kismet (47:39)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yep.

 

Plum Stone (47:40)

an extraordinary, you know, we're not, and of course the money comes out of different pockets, doesn't it, from a government perspective. The sort of, you the money that would be spent to mechanically upgrade, actually those would probably both come out of the Department of Education, but it tends to come out of different pockets. It gets spent from the Department of Education and gets, you know, the rewards come to health, or the, it's, and that makes it

 

Jess Kismet (48:02)

Mm. Mm.

 

Plum Stone (48:04)

tricky. But yeah, the productivity benefits are very far.

 

region.

 

Jess Kismet (48:11)

It's always baffled me since you know I started my career in the building science, better building, healthy buildings, healthy occupants kind of industry that the connection between the building industry and the health industry are not more closely interlinked because they are directly linked.

 

Plum Stone (48:24)

Yep. Yes.

 

Jess Kismet (48:28)

This is just baffling. So

 

Plum Stone (48:29)

Yeah, it's...

 

Jess Kismet (48:30)

your work around, sorry continue.

 

Plum Stone (48:33)

No,

 

no, no, I was going to say we spend 90 % of our time indoors. The majority of our exposures come when we are indoors. And it's a huge number of pollutants that affect our health. So yeah, totally I'm with you. I don't understand why the two have not been better connected. They should always have been connected.

 

Jess Kismet (48:55)

Left hand's not talking to the right hand. So which, I think you've already answered this question during the course of this discussion, but which industry do you think, which sector is further behind in adopting safer air or in thinking about their indoor air quality? Schools, healthcare or workplaces?

 

Plum Stone (49:16)

think schools. I always kind of come back to schools as being such a huge sort of area. From a workplace perspective, obviously we're seeing progress in terms of things like the model code of practice for the control of biological hazards. Obviously from a safe work perspective, they've done a huge amount of the last few years in terms of other pollutants that transmit through the air, particularly if you look at silica.

 

know, silicosis has obviously been a huge driver for workplace health and safety. So I think workplaces, from a legislative perspective, I think they're actually doing the best. if you, sorry, if you take a look at it from that angle.

 

Jess Kismet (50:01)

Yeah.

 

Plum Stone (50:03)

Department of Education versus Safe Work Australia, Department of Education are way behind. They are totally failing

 

Jess Kismet (50:10)

Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (50:11)

to see the connection between their duty of care for children and the air in the classrooms, and that is a big gap.

 

Jess Kismet (50:19)

Mm.

 

Plum Stone (50:19)

There was also on Monday at the parliamentary inquiry, the New South Wales Teachers Federation gave testimony.

 

And it was amazing. It was really super

 

Jess Kismet (50:31)

Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (50:31)

fantastic. I highly recommend that your listeners take a look. can perhaps sort of share the links. The New South Wales Teachers

 

Jess Kismet (50:39)

That would be great.

 

Plum Stone (50:40)

Federation did an absolutely bang up job of talking about why teachers, particularly because

 

Jess Kismet (50:46)

You

 

Plum Stone (50:47)

of course schools are workplaces. So as well as being places

 

Jess Kismet (50:50)

Mmm.

 

Plum Stone (50:52)

that our children learn. So yeah, they did a super job. But again,

 

they were approaching that from a worker's perspective. And I think that's,

 

Jess Kismet (51:02)

Mm.

 

Plum Stone (51:03)

you know, so we understand that workers need safe working environments. In theory, we should understand that children need safe learning environments, but we don't seem to be doing that as well.

 

So yeah, that's where I think

 

Jess Kismet (51:15)

Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (51:16)

the big focus needs to be. If we can improve indoor air quality in schools, we'll have such a huge impact on the health of our children for their whole life course. And why wouldn't we want that for our kids?

 

Jess Kismet (51:33)

Absolutely. Do you have any thoughts on what builders and architects could do in the early phases of a building, design and construct, that could affect indoor air quality for years? Like what do you wish that they understood in the early phases?

 

Plum Stone (51:50)

think

 

not aiming for the minimum. The standards that we have, 1668.2 particularly, it's a minimum. That's what is the minimum requirement that new buildings should have. What's the best?

 

Jess Kismet (52:05)

Mm-hmm. Mm.

 

Plum Stone (52:06)

How do we not

 

see the minimum acceptable requirement? I hate the use of the word acceptable when it comes to air quality. Why not accessible air quality,

 

Jess Kismet (52:17)

Hahaha.

 

Plum Stone (52:18)

you know? I just think it's such a small shift. So yeah, not just aiming for the minimum. Because of course it's just a design standard, not a performance standard. So

 

Jess Kismet (52:28)

Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (52:28)

once the building's commissioned, how does it get?

 

how do the occupiers use the building? All

 

Jess Kismet (52:37)

Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (52:38)

you have to do is look at naturally ventilated schools as an example and to know that children don't have a say over whether or not the classroom is being ventilated to the level that it should be according to the NCC. So I think

 

Jess Kismet (52:54)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (52:55)

it's just really important that we look at this from what's the best we can do, not the minimum.

 

Jess Kismet (53:01)

Mm-hmm.

 

from a construction perspective, there's a tension between air tightness and indoor air quality. there's a, in some areas, it's a good understanding of how the two interrelate and in other areas, a broader area of the industry, there's misunderstanding about it. So the catchphrase that we talk about is build tight, ventilate right. Because air tightness is being promoted in the building code to reduce

 

electricity bills to increase

 

Plum Stone (53:28)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

 

Jess Kismet (53:28)

energy efficiency but there's a knock-on effect of air tightness

 

Plum Stone (53:31)

Mm-hmm.

 

Jess Kismet (53:32)

and that is a decrease in indoor air quality because you're trapping carbon dioxide, you're trapping pollutants inside the home. So how do those two things interrelate from your perspective and how should the building industry be navigating it do you think?

 

Plum Stone (53:46)

Yeah, I mean I think it's a great phrase and I love the way it's kind of put together, know, build tight and ventilate right. They have to be done together. You can't do one without doing the other. And I totally

 

Jess Kismet (53:59)

Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (53:59)

appreciate that, you know, from an energy perspective it's super important that we do that.

 

However, we would never say, let's ditch the fire suppression system. It's a

 

Jess Kismet (54:11)

Mm-mm.

 

Plum Stone (54:13)

health and safety tool that we have to have and we know we have to have.

 

It should

 

Jess Kismet (54:18)

Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (54:18)

be the same for the ventilation, for the air quality. We have to see it as a health and safety system that everybody needs. So I think kind of not seeing it as being something that's okay to let it fall by the wayside, that energy always trumps air quality.

 

I don't think that should be the case. think we need to always see them as being things that need to be maximized together. And of course we've got tools and technologies that can improve indoor air quality that are very energy efficient, we

 

Jess Kismet (54:59)

Mm-hmm.

 

Plum Stone (55:00)

should be using them.

 

So it

 

Jess Kismet (55:02)

Mm.

 

Plum Stone (55:03)

goes back to this conversation around CO2 and outdoor air, where it's not possible to be ventilating with 100 % outdoor air. Increase the filtration. Use disinfection technology. You can improve indoor air quality without having a massive energy hit.

 

Jess Kismet (55:22)

So last question Plum, we have come to the end of our interview thank you for your time but I have one question that I ask all of my guests and that is

 

What is the one thing you would like the listener to take away out of everything that you've learned in your career? Is there one message?

 

Plum Stone (55:39)

be to just try and see the air differently. We don't see the air at all, but try and see it. And try and see it from the perspective of someone who needs to be able to breathe safely in order to protect their health. And what can we all be doing to ensure that the air that we share indoors is safe for everyone? I think the invisibility of it.

 

means it's something that we often forget, but I would just encourage the listeners to not forget about it.

 

Jess Kismet (56:15)

Excellent, thank you Plum, it's been an absolute pleasure.

 

Plum Stone (56:18)

Thank you very much for having me Jess, it's been lovely chatting to you.

 

Jess Kismet (56:21)

Okay, thanks, bye.