A retired emergency room physician is encouraging residents to check out a new service at the New Westminster Public Library.
Lyne Filiatrault, a retired emergency physician who lives in New West believes residents will benefit from a new lending program at the library, which allows patrons to check out CO2 monitors to better understand the quality of the air in their home, their workplace and the spaces they visit.
In 2022, she learned the Peterborough Public Library had started a program in partnership with Peterborough Public Health; West Vancouver Memorial Library and North Vancouver District Public Library followed suit, and she wrote to the New Westminster Public Library asking it to consider a CO2 monitor lending program. She also met one of the co-founders of the non-profit organization, Community Access to Ventilation Information, and learned about the library-based CO2 lending program it launched in 2022 an and expanded across Canada with support from the Balvi Philanthropic Fund.
“One of the things we’ve learned through this ongoing COVID pandemic and last summer’s forest fires is that we need to pay closer attention to how clean the air we breathe is,” said Filiatrault, a member of Protect Our Province, a group of physicians, nurses, health scientists, health policy specialists and community advocates who work together to advocate for evidence-based health policies in B.C.
High CO2 levels are associated with headache, drowsiness and poor attention, said Filiatrault, adding one school study actually showed that when ventilation and indoor air quality were improved, students’ math and reading scores improved.
“Carbon dioxide is a proxy that tells us how good the ventilation is in the spaces where we spend time in: home, work, schools, shops, etc.,” she said. “Through breathing, we exhale CO2; that means that more people in a given space, the higher the CO2 concentration levels will be, unless there is good air exchange or dilution with outdoor air. Generation of CO2, just like aerosols, also increases with activity level from breathing to talking, to shouting and exercising.”
Caitlin MacRae, a programming librarian with the New Westminster Public Library, said the library has six monitors that folks can borrow.
“Since COVID and the upswing in understanding about the importance of ventilation in keeping us safe, many libraries have started to carry items like CO2 monitors, so it’s definitely a topic that is active in the library community,” she said. “It’s part of a larger movement in libraries to circulate more ‘things’ that are useful and practical to folks in a variety of ways but aren’t traditional library materials like books.”
Ukuleles, toys, gardening tools, computers and eReaders are some of the other items now available at the New Westminster Public Library.
“For the CO2 monitors, we had a number of community members who were proactive in requesting that we carry them – and we always try to be responsive to what the community would like to see in the library collection,” MacRae said. “We were also able to access a grant to help purchase these monitors, as they are fairly expensive.”
Asked why the library initiated this particular program, MacRae said that post-COVID, people have different levels of comfort in engaging in-person in the public sphere.
“It’s important that people are able to make informed decisions about what is right for them. While CO2 monitors can’t change the realities of ventilation in public buildings, they do provide information that can allow folks to make their own informed decisions,” she said. “Along with other library initiatives (home delivery of library materials, hybrid options for programming, and electronic resources that can be accessed from home, for example), this is part of the library’s commitment to responding to community needs and providing useful tools.”
Added MacRae: “I’m also happy to report that CO2 readings inside the library are excellent!”
Clean air is crucial
Breathing clean air is just as important as drinking clean water, Filiatrault said.
“Knowing how good the ventilation is matters, especially now, when we have many viruses co-circulating and spreading through aerosols we breathe such as influenza, RSV and SARS-CoV-2 to name just a few,” she said. “The CO2 level in a shared space, helps determine the amount of stale air, or percentage of someone’s exhale air we will be rebreathing, and thus indirectly what our risk of breathing infected aerosols is, should someone be infectious.”
During forest fires, Filiatrault uses the Air Quality Index to determine if outdoor activities are safe. She uses CO2 levels to decide if she needs to avoid certain spaces altogether, or only when densely packed with people, and/or limit her time in the space and consider wearing a well-fitted, high-grade filtration mask.
“During the pandemic, some teachers have been using CO2 levels in their classroom to determine when to open windows and doors and bring in more fresh air to dilute any stale air, including virus laden aerosols,” she said. “They are essentially using another layer of protection to prevent COVID infections.”
According to Filiatrault, seven million people die annually from air pollution, both indoors and outdoors. She said that number doesn’t include all those who develop cardiovascular, respiratory diseases and cancers as a result of air pollution.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has also shown us that sharing indoor air during a pandemic caused by a virus that spreads through aerosols is dangerous and at times deadly,” she said.
Prioritizing indoor air quality will not only improve the health and well-being of occupants but also productivity, and will decrease work or school absences due to illness, Filiatrault said.
“We spend close to 90 per cent of our time indoors, yet we don’t know the quality of the air we breathe,” she said.
“Very easy to use”
At the New Westminster Public Library, monitors are visible in its catalogue, just like books. They can be placed on hold and picked up at the main or Queensborough branches.
“The monitors come with a quick start guide in the kit, and there is also a free app that folks can download and pair with the device to provide more functionality,” MacRae said. “But they work right out of the box – there’s no need to even turn them on – so they’re really user-friendly.”
MacRae said the NWPL would love for everyone to try the monitors, and use the information they learn to make good decisions for themselves and their families. The library would also like to hear how folks have used the monitors.
“We just launched the borrowing at the beginning of December, and all the monitors are currently out or on hold, so I would say there’s been good interest,” she told the Record. “I took one home to my house and found the information to be really different from what I expected! It will inform how I host guests over the holidays and possibly how I plan future renovations. I encourage everyone to give it a try.”
Filiatrault said the monitors are “very easy” to use. She noted that people can also use the Aranet app to track CO2 levels over time and see the impact on the CO2 levels in the space from changes in occupancy levels or from opening windows
“We urgently need indoor air quality standards, and measuring CO2 is one step in this direction,” she said. “Some countries like Belgium are leading the way with indoor air quality legislation. Next step will be improvements to building codes. Canada should not wait to do the same; our health and our children’s health are too valuable.”
