Clean Air Day is led by environmental charity Global Action Plan and aims to improve public understanding of air pollution, build awareness of how air pollution affects our health and explain the easy actions we can all take to tackle air pollution, helping protect the environment and our health.

This year’s event is focussing on protecting children's health from air pollution, especially following the hard times many experienced during the pandemic. Therefore Vent-Axia is providing some easy-to-follow steps as part of its ongoing commitment to sharing its knowledge of how ventilation and air purification can help protect public health.

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted children severely, affecting their freedom, education and mental wellbeing. As society opens up and children return to their lives, it’s vital that they can learn and play in healthy environments. This Clean Air Day, good Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) is more important than ever since COVID-19 has highlighted the importance of ventilation and the air we breathe, while children have spent more time indoors due to lockdowns.

Vent-Axia is therefore offering eight easy steps to ‘reduce, dilute and purify’ to help tackle indoor air pollution and improve IAQ in the home:

• Avoid spraying aerosols

• Use unscented candles

• Vacuum regularly

• Dry wet clothes outside or in a dryer

• Use a cooker hood

• Don’t forget to ventilate

• Use an air purifier

• Clean fan filters

“We are pleased to once again support Clean Air Day since it continues to raise awareness of the importance of clean air. Long-term exposure to air pollution is the biggest environmental threat to health in the UK so our simple steps are designed to help improve air quality in the home and benefit the long-term health of children and their families”, explains Lena Hebestreit, marketing manager at Vent-Axia. “To improve indoor air quality there are three main actions to take: 1.Reduce the number of pollutants introduced into the air; 2.Dilute the pollutants in the air by ensuring there is adequate ventilation introducing fresh clean air; 3.Purify by adding an air purifier to remove the remaining pollutants from the air.”

With this year’s Clean Air Day focusing on children, the air they breathe indoors is more important than ever. The vital importance of clean air for children’s health was highlighted in the 2020 report by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) and the Royal College of Physicians, ‘The inside story: Health effects of indoor air quality on children and young people’. It found growing evidence that respiratory problems among children may be exacerbated by indoor air pollution in homes, schools and nurseries. ‘Indoor Air Quality at Home’ guidance from the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) also highlights how reducing exposure to indoor pollutants helps protect health.

To help protect health in the home, Vent-Axia has been working to provide ventilation solutions to improve IAQ for households and has a number of solutions available for different types of establishments.

To celebrate this year’s Clean Air Day Vent-Axia has also run a children’s drawing competition to allow children to help improve the public understanding of air pollution. The competition asked children to send in a picture either on the theme of Clean Air Day or Indoor Air Quality. The competition had three winners: Ethan, age 4; Sam, age 8 and Amita, age 12.