Good indoor air quality has become a critical public health issue. We spend more than 85% of our time in confined spaces, whether it is at home, in a restaurant, in a gym or at the cinema. And this indoor air that we breathe can sometimes be polluted by dust, chemicals, micro-organisms, bacteria and ... viruses. To limit the spread of these contaminants: air, ventilate and purify!
Calmly welcoming the public
"Here, only the film will take your breath away!" reflects the commitment of the Federation of Belgian Cinemas (FCB) to guarantee the air quality in its cinemas. In order to reassure the public of its ability to accommodate viewers safely, the FCB approached the FPS Public Health. The experts of the FPS have developed a calculation method to determine the maximum number of people allowed in a room ("the permitted capacity"). The result not only considers the room capacity but also the performance levels of the ventilation and purification systems.
Transparency, a sign of confidence
The FCB is pioneering the use of this measurement tool, which will be implemented in the project's partner cinemas. This initiative is based on a voluntary and self-monitored approach. Each operator encodes, generates and checks its own data and makes this data available to the FPS. In this way, the operator controls the process and is responsible for displaying the label. For its part, the FPS guarantees the quality of the measuring instrument, which should enable cinema operators to obtain reliable data on indoor air quality.
This approach is a pilot project. Very promising, it must be evaluated based on the results which will be provided by the partner cinemas before it can be implemented by other operators.