The big question: switch on the air filter or save energy?

Created: 09/23/2022, 07:34

By: Stefanie Zipfer

Mobile fans and open windows: Students should be protected from Corona and at the same time save energy.

© Hans Moritz

Should the air filters be used in the Dachau classrooms, despite the energy crisis?

The city faces a problem.

Dachau - Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach predicted a difficult winter for the Germans weeks ago - because of Corona.

Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck also swore the people to hard times - because of the energy crisis.

Firstly, citizens should protect themselves as well as possible against infection and, secondly, save energy.

Two ministerial orders have to be reconciled

The city of Dachau is now faced with the problem of reconciling both high-ministerial announcements.

Because there are air filters in the urban classrooms, which firstly cost an awful lot of money and secondly, after endless delivery problems, only arrived in the large district town last spring.

Unlike the district, which, due to the controversial effectiveness of the devices and the high costs for its schools, had always relied on silly window ventilation as the corona remedy of choice, the Dachau town hall now has to make a decision: Do you save energy and leave out the air filters?

Or do you protect the children and let the filters run?

"Phew", "no idea" have been the answers from those responsible to this question so far.

The Federal Environment Agency clarified a few weeks ago that the mobile air purifiers, which have been in the Dachau classrooms for four months now, from an epidemiological point of view "only make sense where windows can only be tilted" - as an additional measure, so to speak.

The only true protection for children from infection is air exchange through wide-open windows.

In other words: You can save yourself the air filter.

However, the city does not want to rely on the announcement by the Federal Environment Agency that they are still waiting for a “recommendation for action” from the Ministry of Education on the filter issue.

Karlsfeld mayor and district councilor Stefan Kolbe, who had always warned against buying the mobile air purifiers, should feel vindicated.

A year ago he protested against the purchase of the devices in the district council with the words: "In the end we have electronic waste lying around for 250,000 euros."

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