This project committee is responsible for maintaining
ANSI/ASHRAE/ASHE Standard 170, Ventilation of Health Care Facilities

FOREWORD

ANSI/ASHRAE/ASHE Standard 170, Ventilation of Health Care Facilities, is one of a family of documents that offers guidance, regulation, and mandates to designers of health care facilities. It is first and foremost a mandatory minimum requirement and, as such, may not offer the state-of-the art best practice of health care ventilation design. Other publications, such as the ASHRAE HVAC Design Manual for Hospitals and Clinics, may provide more depth and detail for the designer. In addition, the health care designer must refer to any design requirements from the appropriate jurisdiction that has authority. Many jurisdictions use or refer to Guidelines for Design and Construction of Hospitals and Health Care Facilities, published by the American Institute of Architects (AIA). Where practical, the committee was cognizant of these other documents in the development of this standard.

Ventilation design for health care spaces is a combination of tasks that leads to a set of documents used in construction. One such task requires medical planners to develop departmental programs of spaces. These programs include space names that suggest the use for which the space is intended, and health care ventilation designers depend upon these names to determine the ventilation parameters for their designs. This standard provides these ventilation parameters.

Without high-quality ventilation in health care facilities, patients, health care workers, and visitors can become infected through normal respiration of particles in the air. Poorly ventilated health care facilities are places where the likelihood of pathogenic particles occurring in the air is quite high. These air-transmitted pathogens can be found everywhere in poorly ventilated health care facilities, and although most individuals can cope using their healthy immune systems, some patients are susceptible to these pathogens or even to normal environmental air-borne organisms such as fungal spores. Because these organisms are found in higher concentrations in hospitals, additional care must be taken in design of the ventilation systems.

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ANSI/ASHRAE/ASHE Standard 170 is under continuous maintenance by SSPC 170 for which the Standards Committee has established a documented program for regular publication of addenda or revisions.