Dr. Stephanie Taylor
October 5th, 2023
LEED v5 and Occupant Health: What you Need to Know and How ThinkLite Air Delivers
Celebrating its 30th Anniversary in September 2023, USGBC released a transformative beta version of LEED v5 for existing buildings at the Greenbuild 2023 International Conference and Expo. This version, which will continue to evolve, brings the game-changing inclusion of optimizing indoor air quality (IAQ) for occupant health into the LEED certification standards.
The new release of the beta LEED v5 rating system for existing buildings outlines a data-driven approach to benchmarking and scoring for certification. Specifically, within the category of Environmental Quality, a building can now gain points for monitoring and managing IAQ for occupant health. To maintain or acquire the highest Gold or Platinum LEED rating, credits for health are now added to decarbonization, equity, and resiliency.
EQ LEED Goal
“To define occupant needs related to the indoor environment and ensure and sustain access to indoor, health-promoting features.” - LEED v5 O+M, Indoor Environment Quality
Historically, IAQ has received less attention than outdoor air pollution. While COVID brought focus to airborne disease transmission indoors, understanding and managing the health impact of IAQ needs to go beyond quantifying exposure to airborne pollutants to addressing the holistic impact on human health. In fact, optimizing IAQ can significantly improve productivity and wellbeing of occupants.
In addition to monitoring IAQ, LEED v5 embraces the need to measure the quality of outdoor air as part of an overall ventilation strategy. Historic norms have assumed that outdoor air ventilation ameliorates potential contaminants in indoor environments when, in fact, poor outdoor air quality can exacerbate harmful conditions.
Environment Quality (EQ) - The Value of for Occupant Health
LEED v5 now provides opportunities to collect points for steps to support occupant health. These points include health assessments, comprehensive monitoring of indoor and outdoor air compounds and the efficient management of IAQ.
ThinkLite Air can guide your project to add as many as 37 LEED points:
21 points for indoor and outdoor air monitoring
05 points for occupant health needs assessment
02 points for green cleaning strategies that reduce harm from chemicals
09 points to address social equity through public health priorities
What is the ThinkLite Air, Human-Centered IAQ Solution?
Protecting the health of occupants through optimizing IAQ in the most energy efficient way is exactly the value-add of the Health Index.
Our unique medical approach, based on scientific research, uses our technology to measure and analyze the health impact of individual and interacting air constituents. The resulting data-driven remediation recommendations help improve indoor air in real-time AND reduce unnecessary building energy use.
How ThinkLite Air Can Help You Achieve LEED Credits
The Health Index is more than an IAQ monitoring system; it includes a diagnostic technology and platform centered on occupant health that can help you gain valuable points across four credit categories of LEED v5. See the chart below for point opportunities that the Health Index can help you achieve.
Speak Directly with Dr. Taylor
Get in touch with Dr. Stephanie Taylor to ask any questions you have to improve your indoor air quality focused on health.
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