HEALTH AND ENVIRONMENT

French version

Indoor air quality (IAQ) has become a public health issue over the last twenty years, with growing concern for people, the scientific community, public authorities and businesses, especially since the Covid-19 epidemic. In France, the socio-economic cost of indoor air pollution is estimated at more than 19 billion euros a year. Furthermore, managing indoor air quality impinges on other issues, including the energy performance and environmental footprint of our buildings and transportation system.

Climate change has also altered our perception of this issue. Reducing emissions involves improving building insulation, which raises new questions about ventilation. Businesses are concerned as both producers and users of various substances, as well as hosts to their employees and customers in their premises or vehicles.

In recent years, nearly forty large member companies of the Association française des Entreprises pour l’Environnement (EpE) have collaboratively shared their experience within the framework of the Health & Environment Commission. This collaborative effort aims to identify, understand, and respond to health, environmental and economic issues related to indoor air quality for both their internal operations and external stakeholders. This publication serves as an update on the knowledge gained and the work carried out by this Committee as well as member companies to improve indoor air quality.

French version

The globalization of the economy and the mass distribution of consumer goods have had the effect of lengthening value chains, making product traceability and knowledge of the composition and impacts of each component and substance both difficult and essential.
Eighteen EpE member companies wished to share in this publication their methods, practices and solutions for managing environmental health issues. Experts clarified the discussions and sharing of best practices.

• The first section of this publication puts in perspective the factors that encourage businesses to integrate environmental health issues into their strategy and throughout the lifecycle of their products and services. It will explain in detail:
  – The increasing societal expectations on the emerging issues of water, air and soil pollution facing businesses.
  – The risks of a crisis and a disruption in production to be anticipated.
  – The potential opportunities associated with a proactive approach. Some EpE member companies systematically integrate health and environmental risks as soon as they establish their research directions and especially explore innovations that promote health.
  – Finally, anticipation and evolution of the law in a complicated legal framework due to the interdisciplinarity of the topic.

• The second section describes three types of methods and management tools regarding environmental health risk:
  – The first actions to address these issues are tools for analysing and measuring risks to be prioritised in environmental health.
  – Employees awareness is another tool of risk management. It involves embedding health and the environment into corporate values and adopting risk reduction tools beyond what is required by regulations.
  – Finally, external communication through existing and non-existing tools is one of the keys to restore trust between health actors and to develop collective solutions.