Carbon dioxide monitors will not improve ventilation in schools and colleges

‘A classroom CO₂ reading will not stop students asking for windows to be closed or the heating to be turned up.’ Photograph: Wolfgang Rattay/Reuters

Carbon dioxide monitors cannot improve ventilation in schools (Classrooms in England to get air quality monitors to help combat Covid, 21 August). It is two months past the solstice and the chill of autumn is only a few weeks away. A classroom CO₂ reading will not stop students from homes heated to 22C, dropped off in summer clothes at the school gate from a heated car, asking for windows to be closed or the heating to be turned up.

To reduce fuel bills and CO₂ emissions in colleges and schools, blocking up draughts was a cheap first move. This often left the opening of windows and doors as the only mode of ventilation.

We need a massive programme to provide colleges and schools with safe, economic ventilation, using cross-flow heat exchanger systems, for example, which heat incoming fresh air through the warm extracted air. Educational buildings that rely on forced-air heating and ventilation should urgently check that they are not incorporating recirculated air, unless their systems adequately sterilise Covid viruses in the returning air.
Steve Bolter
Green Liberal Democrats, Essex

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