The importance of indoor airflow patterns in spreading airborne disease

Researchers from MIT and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center have found that the specific patterns of indoor airflow are more critical for preventing the spread of airborne diseases than the overall ventilation rate. As MIT News tells it, the team used fluid physics and computational modeling to show how small design details, such as air leaks and the location of inflows and outflows, can either promote or mitigate the transmission of diseases like tuberculosis. The findings suggest that retrofitting indoor spaces to control these local airflow patterns could serve as a low-cost tool for public health prevention in crowded areas.

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