PHAN, RESET and Safer Air Project launch indoor air quality index

Public Health Action Network, RESET and the Safer Air Project have launched an international effort to create the RESET Safer Air Accessibility Index, or RSAAI, a new score meant to make indoor air safety visible. The tool is designed to help people understand how ventilation, filtration and air cleaning technologies affect the air in rooms where they live, work and gather.

Why it matters: - Indoor air quality affects health, productivity and building costs, but most people have no simple way to tell whether the air in a room is safe to breathe. - The new index aims to turn an invisible risk into a readable score, which could help occupants make better decisions and push institutions to improve indoor air. - The initiative frames clean indoor air as an environmental accessibility issue, not just a building-performance issue.

What happened: - Public Health Action Network, RESET and the Safer Air Project announced an international collaboration to build the RESET Safer Air Accessibility Index, or RSAAI. - The announcement came Sept. 9, 2026, from Dover, Delaware. - The RSAAI is intended to make the safety of indoor air, including the air-cleaning technology in use, visible for the first time. - The project builds on RESET's existing Viral Index framework for measuring airborne infection risk.

The details: - The RSAAI is designed to combine multiple layers of protection in a space into a single score. - Those layers include natural ventilation, mechanical ventilation, filtration, portable air cleaners and air disinfection technologies. - The score is meant to show how much safer a room is than an unventilated baseline. - CO2 levels can help estimate ventilation rates and infection risk, but CO2 alone does not capture the full effect of added air-cleaning technologies. - The collaboration brings together expertise in indoor air quality, lived experience, public health and building performance. - RESET said the goal is to develop transparent, data-driven methods that translate complex building performance into information people can understand and trust. - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency identifies poor indoor air quality as an environmental risk factor that can worsen health outcomes, lower productivity and increase maintenance and other building-related costs.

Between the lines: - The project is responding to a growing gap between what buildings can now do to clean indoor air and what occupants can easily see or verify. - By focusing on accessibility, the three organizations are broadening indoor air quality from a technical metric into a shared public-health and inclusion standard. - The effort also signals a push for accountability from institutions that manage schools, workplaces, care settings and other indoor spaces.

What's next: - The three organizations will develop the RSAAI as a shared framework for communicating how accessible healthy indoor air is within a space. - Media inquiries about the project can be sent to Tarz Ludwigsen at press@phan.global. - Public Health Action Network, RESET and the Safer Air Project are positioning the index as a tool for people to make informed decisions about the places where they spend time.

The bottom line: - The RSAAI is meant to make indoor air safety measurable, comparable and easier for the public to understand.