Xaveriuscollege measures indoor air quality
You tackle the following challenges:
Xaverius College is a large school community with almost 1700 students, from toddlers to young adults. The school is located near the Antwerp Ring, the E313 and the Stenenbrug, but fortunately it is also fairly well shielded from those traffic arteries. Many buildings are not located on the street side, but are surrounded by houses. The school corridors are on the street side, the classrooms overlook the playground or the inner garden. The students mapped out this situation with an air quality scan. From 2019 to 2021, the students took various indoor air measurements in classrooms and halls, and measurements of the outside air around the school. At the end of 2020, they translated their first research results into a promotional project film.
Where is healthy breathing at school?
More insight into indoor air quality is important. Because keeping windows and doors closed as much as possible is a way to keep out polluted outside air (fine dust and nitrogen dioxide). But not airing has drawbacks, such as more CO₂ and more chemicals from unhealthy materials in the school itself. In order to gain insight into this and to learn whether it is possible to ventilate in a healthy way, the concentrations of CO₂, particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide and volatile organic compounds were measured in several large halls and classrooms.
“ We set up special sensor boxes in four large halls ,” explains ecology teacher Hans Gooris. “ We can air one room better than the other. In December 2019, the rooms were used as exam rooms. Each time, 50 to 250 students and supervisors were together for a few hours. Depending on the time at which we measured, more or fewer students were present. The project team formulated a hypothesis about the air quality for each room beforehand. Based on the measurement results, the team could then see how the air quality in the halls, classrooms (and also the teacher's room) could be improved.
Attention test shakes students awake
Losing attention? Concentration problem? It could well be the result of too little oxygen (and therefore too much CO₂) in the classroom. Good airing is the message, provided that the outside air is healthy enough. But many students are not aware of this.
That is why a comparative study was set up in which students fill in a worksheet with challenging questions at different times and locations. The hypothesis: students in a well-ventilated room score better. The students ecology and research competence of the fifth and sixth years of secondary education conducted the research in the last year of primary and in the first secondary.
Conclusion: in the poorly ventilated rooms the CO 2 concentrations quickly rose above 1500 parts per million (ppm). This had a clear effect on the students' ability to concentrate: in a poorly ventilated room, the students not only made 10% more mistakes, but they also worked almost 20% slower.
Based on their research, the students formulated a number of recommendations to limit the CO 2 concentration as much as possible and to provide the students with enough fresh air:
- Have students go outside regularly ('rain or shine'),
- Make sure that at least one window is always open in every classroom,
- Open all windows during breaks.
From dry research results to a recruiting project film
Communication is of great importance to create support, both at school and beyond. Thanks to a dynamoPROJECT by Cultuurkuur and with filmonderwijs.be as a partner, the students were able to film their research results. In this way, the students were not only challenged to think about the results, but also about how they could communicate them to fellow students, parents, teachers and the neighbourhood. Of course, the information from a video is much more memorable than a dry research report. Here you can read more about the film experiences of the Xaverius College.
The project team also sent a survey to students, teachers and parents to gauge their opinion on what the school itself already knows or suspects about the air quality in and around the school. “ The survey was prepared by the students and followed up by the humanities teacher who has experience in preparing and processing surveys ,” says Hans Gooris. “ We wanted to find out three things. One: how do students get to school? Two: which route do they use - along these routes we have meanwhile hung self-built particulate matter sensors from Luchtbuis . And three: are our students aware of air quality? This was important for the further development of our communication section. We really ask everyone about that level of awareness, because we think there is still work to be done. ”
