Indoor Air Quality for Healthcare Administrators, Facility Managers

CARPET’S CLEAN BILL OF HEALTH

~ The Facts about Carpet and Indoor Air Quality for Healthcare Administrators and Facility Managers - 4th in a series

This series of articles is designed to share some of Carpet and Rug Institute’s (CRI) best online assets – a collection of downloadable fact sheets. Developed as easy-to-use, one-page position statements, the CRI Fact Sheets cover four main carpet-related topic areas: Indoor Air Quality, Asthma and Allergy, Cleaning Products, and Environmental Sustainability.

Each of these topics is addressed from the perspective of various market segments: carpet dealers and consumers; architects, designers and builders; school administrators and facility managers, and healthcare administrators and facility managers. There are also separate fact sheets explaining CRI’s Green Label Plus Indoor Air Quality and Seal of Approval carpet cleaning standards – 18 fact sheets in all.

The fact sheet on Indoor Air Quality for healthcare administrators and facility managers begins,

“In any healthcare setting, patient care comes first. That’s why maintaining indoor air quality is paramount. The Carpet and Rug Institute (CRI) has conducted scientific research and gathered independent data that show carpet is not only a viable choice for the healthcare industry, it’s the best choice.” It continues:

What You Should Know

• New carpet emits the lowest levels of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) of common flooring choices. Not only is it the lowest-emitting floor covering, it is also one of the lowest-emitting construction and renovation products overall – much lower than products such as paint.

• What low emissions in new carpet there are drop significantly after 24 hours – even sooner with fresh air ventilation.

• Carpet manufacturers were the first in the flooring industry to thoroughly study their products for indoor air quality effects.

• In 1992, CRI became the first organization to set limits on how many VOCs from carpet, adhesives and cushion may be released into the air. Since then, the Green Label Plus program has voluntarily raised IAQ standards four times by requiring even lower emission levels and increasing the number of compounds evaluated.

• CRI also worked with California’s Sustainable Building Task Force and Department of Health to certify carpet and adhesives. Green Label Plus meets, and even exceeds, the low-emitting product testing protocols used by the Collaborative for High Performance Schools (CHPS).

• The Green Guide for Health Care (GGHC), a best practices guide for healthy and sustainable building, design, construction and operations for healthcare facilities, specifies the use of CRI-approved carpet.

CRI wants to be known not just as the science-based source of information about carpet, but as the first stop for any and all questions about this useful floor covering.

See the complete list of Carpet and Rug Institute Downloadable Fact Sheets.

Click on this link for the CRI downloadable fact sheet about Carpet and Indoor Air Quality for Healthcare Administrators and Facility Managers.

For previous posts in this CRI Fact Sheets series discussing Indoor Air Quality:

•  Fact Sheet for Carpet Retailers, Consumers
• Fact Sheet for Architects, Designers, Builders
• Fact Sheet for School Administrators, Facility Managers

Next – The facts about carpet, asthma and allergies for retailers and residential customers.

~Bethany