Managing and maintaining a facility requires year-round attention, and the seasonal changes, especially here in the UK, can pose unique challenges for your site and its buildings and also for your staff.
We might look at the summer, grateful for clear skies and warm temperatures, however, the warm weather can bring a range of problems with it that can affect your facility, and the well-being of your staff and visitors.
In our guide, we’ll look at how warmer summers can impact your indoor air quality, and offer solutions to help address these challenges effectively
Warm temperatures don’t just mean increased air conditioning usage. High temperatures, and a lot of sunlight, are included in the leading causes of smog. Traditionally, smog was formed when water vapour condensed on soot particles in the air. In the modern day, smog is usually formed because the sun shines on surfaces with nitrogen oxides or volatile organic compounds (VOCs) like benzene, ethylene glycol, formaldehyde, methylene chloride, or tetrachloroethylene and others, and this causes a photochemical reaction.
Reactions like this, even on a small scale, have a huge impact on the amount of pollutants in the air, especially in places that get minimal wind. Smog won’t just impact any plants or trees on your site; it can cause a plethora of health problems including difficulty breathing, asthma, reduced resistance to lung infections and eye irritation. And if your facility handles food, pharmaceutical equipment, or other products that need to remain at a highly regulated standard, these airborne pollutants can have a huge impact on your business’s bottom line.
Smog isn’t the only thing that could pose potential risks for those in your facility. Along with reacting to VOCs on the ground, sunlight also reacts to nitric oxide in the atmosphere. If you’re in an industrial area, it is likely that nitric oxide levels might actually decrease during summer because more combustion power (which emits nitric oxide) is used in the winter, but the risk still exists for your staff.

In addition to outdoor air quality, indoor air quality is also impacted during the summer months.
How often are windows and doors left open to help cool your staff? These openings will equalise the pressure of interior and exterior environments meaning that these potentially harmful pollutants will move into your facility.
Pollutants aren’t the only problems Facility Managers need to watch out for. With the summer months comes an increase in flying insects – these can range from flies threatening your product integrity to wasps or bees making your building their home.
These flying insects don’t just cause trouble for your products; they can also disrupt the day-to-day operations on your site. Whether you’re using electric fly killers, which require power and cleaning, or your staff are swatting them, stopping the problem at its root is the best way forward.
Things to watch out for
Keeping track of air quality is actually a lot easier than you might think. Warm summer days with stagnant air can result in fairly consistent air quality– but during times of high winds or rain, any pollutants that are in the air near your site will likely be blown or washed away.
To get a better look at your local area’s air quality, we suggest having a look at the World’s Air Pollution: Real-time Air Quality Index
This covers the entire globe, so whatever country you’re in, you should be able to find information in real-time.
To understand the rankings:
- The lower the number, the less polluted the air is
- Most cities will see between 50-80, which is considered moderate
- Prolonged exposure to 100 can start to cause health problems
Of course, this won’t be 100% accurate to your site’s location, but if you have an iPhone, you can find information on air pollution in your chosen Weather App.

So, now you know how to track air pollution, how can you resolve the issue of smog pollutants infiltrating your buildings this summer?
How to reduce particulate matter ingress
The best place to start is by keeping your windows and doors closed; your air conditioning units will do the work of keeping your staff cool. In facilities where openings have to be consistently accessible, fast-action doors or Enershield Air Barriers, are an improvement on a heated air curtain, and allow for movement between environments whilst reducing particulate matter ingress.
Enershield Air Barriers are great at reducing the ingress of external pollutants such as particulate matter, odours, dust and flying insects; we’ve helped one client decrease their fly count by 73%.
Blocking particulates at the source is a great way to help reduce ingress, however, there’s no perfect solution. Air purifiers and sterilisers aren’t just a great way of stopping bacteria and viruses from spreading through your facility, but also help your air conditioning systems reduce the potential build up of bacterial matter which can increase its overall energy usage.

Especially in warmer weather, mould and bacteria can thrive within air conditioning systems meaning they take more power to run and can end up costing you more money whilst also risking the spread of bacteria. By using, portable Air Purifiers with the addition of UVC or installing a more permanent solution such as our Biojet(R), which can achieve up to 99.99% kill rate in one pass for an area up to 574m2. You can go some way to eliminate airborne pollutants in your facility.
Each season brings its own unique problems, and keeping your facility operating safely and efficiently means using the best technology in intelligent ways.