Have you been to a stinking classroom? I just came out from one. I accompanied a friend to drop off her four-year old daughter in a high-class school. But for the dirty gutters at the entrance to the school, the environment was clean and welcoming. The compound was spacious with enough, well-trimmed flowers and trees, giving the school a healthy, pleasant ambience. It was very impressive.
On getting to the kid’s classroom however, it was a different story. It was a spacious room that had about six windows. But do you know what? All the windows were shut. The only source of air into the room was the door which was half way opened. The ceiling fan was not working and the elderly female teacher was at one corner of the room eating. It was the worst stuffy, smelly classroom you can imagine. In this poorly ventilated, fetid room were nineteen innocent kids.
We drew the teacher’s attention to the danger of keeping the children in such unhealthy space and asked that she should at least open some of the windows to let fresh air in but she refused, insisting that the air coming in through the door was enough and that if she opened the windows the air will be too much for the children. My friend insisted that those windows must be opened because according to her, the teacher has formed a habit of never opening them and the peculiar odour in the class permeates into the children’s cloth making them smell as well. She said she had kept quiet for a long time and would no longer take it. Anyway, we wait to see how the school authority handles the matter.
Honestly it is difficult to understand why some people will choose to stay in a poorly ventilated environment instead of letting in air. In some homes, a sitting room will have several windows which are supposed to be for the proper ventilation of the room but the dwellers only consider these windows as part of the aesthetic beauty of the building. From week to week, month to month these windows are constantly shut. The thick curtains and linings used to cover these windows will not even let air steal into the room. The only time the windows are opened is when they are being cleaned. Entering there, you are greeted by an offensive smell. Maybe the inhabitants of these homes have gotten so used to the smell that they see nothing wrong but I tell you, as a visitor it can be very repulsive. The worst is if the children bed wet or there are some undried clothes in the room.
The situation is not different in work places, worship centers and other public buildings. What about public vehicles? Can you remember how many times you have witnessed quarrels in public vehicles, especially buses, between commuters over the refusal of some of them, particularly the female, to open the vehicle windows, claiming that “the breeze will spoil my hair”?
It is high time we changed this unhealthy attitude bearing in mind that indoor air quality is an essential requirement for the general well-being of humans. According to Professor Joseph Allen of Harvard’s School of Public Health, USA, humans spend an average of 90% of their time indoors; a healthy room should rotate 5-6 air changes per hour (ACH) — meaning that air should completely recirculate through a space 5-6 times each hour. In how many buildings in Nigeria can we see this happen?
Of course, many homes, schools, offices and others have air conditioners or fans, but should that stop the inlet of fresh air into the house from time to time, especially considering the hotness of our weather? Besides, with last Monday’s collapse of the national grid which had thrown almost the whole nation in darkness coupled with the hike in fuel prices, how many people still have the luxury of using ACs and fans in their homes?
Before the last rain which, to a great extent, cooled the weather temperature, someone made a joke about how people in Port Harcourt would start using fire extinguishers to bathe. Very comical, indeed. But it painted a clear picture of the weather condition not only in the garden city but in many other places across the country. A particular woman in Abuja during a radio phone-in programme said she did not sleep the night before because she was fanning her children who found it difficult to sleep because of the excessive heat and as usual there was no power supply to enable them to use electric fans and other cooling devices in the house.
Research also shows that poor air ventilation in offices and schools is also linked to significantly impaired cognitive functioning. This includes an altered ability to think clearly and creatively. Some of the other adverse health effects due to poor ventilation according to an on-line article include: headaches, fatigue, trouble concentrating, respiratory Symptoms: irritation of nose, shortness of breath, eyes, throat, and lungs, trouble with analytical thinking. Other health problems linked to poor ventilation include asthmas, Legionnaires Disease, hypersensitivity, pneumonitis, humidifier fever, and even cancer due to asbestos.
Let us not forget COVID-19 disease, which we are told spreads via airborne particles and droplets and can be easily contracted in a poorly ventilated environment. One funny thing about the school scenario earlier narrated is that wearing of face mask and other COVID-19 protocols were strictly observed at the entrance gate but in the class room where many children were, talking, singing, crying, coughing, playing, there was no proper circulation of air which aids the spread of the disease.
It is, therefore, pertinent that we as individuals help ourselves to live a healthy life. Government may have failed in providing electricity and other amenities that are supposed to make life easy for the people but we should not fail in doing the little we can to live healthy and happy. Health experts have listed several ways of improving air quality both in classrooms, homes and other places like the use of air purifiers; installation of ventilation systems; using whiteboards instead of chalkboards in classrooms; growing of plants that remove toxins; removing of harmful building materials and many more. While these are important, we should form the habit of opening our windows when it is safe to do so. The windows in our buildings are not there for decoration. They help to keep the houses cross ventilated, facilitate the entry of natural light and so on.
It is also important that government and school owners should carry out regular checks to ensure that a high hygienic and health standard is maintained both outside and within the classrooms at all times to slow the spread of diseases and reduce the frequency of the children and teachers falling sick.

By: Calista Ezeaku