Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) Policy

A comprehensive Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) policy can identify areas for improvement in air quality and provide benchmarks to ensure air quality remains high over time, contributing to enhanced respiratory and mental health.

Key Terms

An Indoor Air Quality Policy is a policy that establishes standards for maintaining optimal air quality within a building after construction and during occupancy, including minimizing off-gassing and noxious odors, selecting appropriate products, and facilitating the assessment, and treatment of air quality issues.
Tobacco-Free Policy refers to a policy that prohibits the use of tobacco products on-site and the use of all forms of inhaling, exhaling, and burning cigarette and vapor-based products.

For full strategy and documentation requirements, please refer to the digital scorecard made available on the Fitwel Platform.

Strategy Insights

To encourage compliance with this strategy, Fitwel’s Standard can be used as a template of qualifying language to model as a template, available for free download here along with other Fitwel policies and standards. In order to achieve this strategy, a project must submit a governing policy that either meets or exceeds the requirements outlined in Fitwel’s policies.

The original version of the IAQ Policy Standard pre-dates the Covid-19 pandemic but is still accepted for compliance under v2.1.
The enhanced version of the IAQ Policy Standard was developed in response to significant research stemming from Covid-19 and is aligned with Fitwel’s Viral Response Module (VRM). Projects that are simultaneously pursuing Fitwel VRM at the entity and/or asset level should opt to implement the enhanced version. Building certifications and VRM asset approvals are linked–when an asset has achieved VRM, aligned strategies within a building certification are auto-awarded.

Policy clarifications:

Submitted policies must clearly detail how all items listed under the “Maintenance & Management” and “Procurement” sections are operationally ongoing.
When phrasing including “such as” and/or “may include” are a part of the Fitwel standard, the subsequent examples are demonstrative only. Not all of the listed sub-criteria is required. Please take note if one or more items are required where relevant.
In addition to being shared through leases and/or tenant manuals, the policy may be made available online, such as on a company’s internal intranet/website.

Additional insights:

Interior wall insulation and insulation beneath floors should be assessed as part of the interior insulation category. To qualify, documentation must show that these elements certified as being low emitting.

Documentation Guidance

All policies are required to be on company letterhead, with a start date of implementation.
When showing how the IAQ Policy is shared with tenants, please submit a copy of or images of the full lease or website to show how the entire, complete version of the qualifying policy is shared.
Ensure the 'Procurement' standards are equivalent to those detailed within the FItwel IAQ Standard. Earlier versions of the same standards will not qualify.

Sample Documentation

This is a sample of documentation for a project pursuing the Design pathway. If the project is pursuing the Built pathway, include a date on document.