If implemented properly, it may be the only silver lining from lessons learned from the COVID response, albeit here attributed to reducing wildfire smoke health effects. If improving air quality in public buildings (like schools) reduces health burdens from communicable diseases, it should be a no-brainer to implement the technologies where not cost-prohibitive.
But bureaucratic inertia in major retrofit projects is difficult to overcome unless there is a clear and present danger. COVID response is (quite rightly) a controversial topic, and somehow evaluating the potential for benign passive “clean air” building improvements got swept up in that whole “active mandate” mess.
But nobody is a fan of wildfire smoke and it is currently a hot topic (no pun intended or achieved). Hope they do something intelligent, at least for children and the elderly.
