GCSU Office

We first began by deploying our sensor in the Glendon College Student Union's office. An office that is often visited by University students at Glendon. It is the most used office on campus as students use the office on a daily basis to print their homework, receive services and purchase tickets for GCSU hosted events such as Pub night and Formal. The GCSU office is open 7 days a week to the students from 9am – 6pm and always has a GCSU representative in the Office. It would be an interesting experiment to determine the type of air quality that GCSU representatives sit in everyday in addition to students that visit the office. 

We began our first deployment on February 14th and kept it in the office until March 2nd, to determine how the air quality would fluctuate during reading week when there is no one in the office and the week after reading week when there are students in the office. Our prediction of the air quality during reading week was that it would be healthy and circulate well since there would be no one in the office, we then predicted that the air quality once students came back would be moderate since it is a small environment and when there is more than 5 people in the office it feels very crowded and not as healthy and easy to breath in. 

We noticed that this is a very small office that is usually filled with a lot of students on a daily basis. There is a lot of chairs, desks and supplies in the front office and back office. While there is windows in the back office that allows for sunlight to come into the office you are unable to open these windows to allow fresh air to come into the office. The office is near B-Wing a section of the school that is known to have very smelly hallways and bathrooms which makes it difficult for students to breath in.

The biggest difficulty faced when deploying in the GCSU office was ensuring that the sensor was properly connected and collected data. This was a challenge as at some points the sensor was fully charged, on and seemed to be collecting data but when tracking it using the online database it was either disconnect or had an error on it. Since the sensor was not connected to an outlet, I had to constantly check the sensor to make sure it was charged and if it wasn’t, to charge it for a few hours before going back to setting it up to collect data. It was quite a tedious process, that took many trips to the GCSU outside of my office hours to ensure that the sensor was working properly. We were not able to record some of the data due to the sensor being dead and our plan was to also deploy it for an additional week to monitor the air but because of the quarantine and encouraged social-distancing practices we were unable to. 

The air quality was moderate during reading week when there were no students in the office which allowed for better air flow than when students were in the office. When students came back to school and utilized the office, the air quality declined drastically to being unhealthy and continued that way for several days. The final verdict on the air quality in the GCSU office is Unhealthy to Very Unhealthy. There were quite a few instances in which the air fluctuated from moderate to unhealthy. We are under the impression that the more students that are in the Office, the more likely the air quality in the office declines. The lack of natural, fresh air and the amount of movement and bodies in the office leads us to the fact that the air quality in the office is unhealthy. If windows were able to be opened in the office or the office was cleared out and not clutter to allow more room for the air to circulate, it may benefit the students from the air they are breathing. It may also be the location that the office is set in, B-Wing is a very smelly and toxic location when passing by, the fumes from that location could possible play a factor in the office air quality being unhealthy. 

- Anjelica