We Need to Improve Indoor Air Quality: Here’s How and WhyUpgrading buildings’ ventilation, filtration and other factors would not only decrease COVID transmission but also improve health and cognitiv

We spend 90 percent of our lives indoors, yet most of us seldom spare a thought for the quality of the air we breathe there.

More than a century ago, pioneering nurse and statistician Florence Nightingale proclaimed the importance of open air and bedroom ventilation for tuberculosis patients. Today in Nordic countries, it is common practice to let babies nap outside, sometimes in freezing temperatures. But even though humans have long attributed health benefits to fresh outdoor air, it is a lesson many of us seemed to have largely forgotten—until the COVID-19 pandemic forced us to relearn it.