I designed a few jobs where I was cooling buildings housing diesel generators for remote communities, 100 miles from the grid.
Cooling was accomplished using outside air. Did not have to use that much air moving through the space during a -30F ambinet, but in the summer the airflow sure got high.
A requirement of the electrical utility was to limit air velocity to no more than 75 FPM, perhaps OSHA has a similar requirement as well. Maybe it is to not require protective eye wear, dust and insects getting blown into your eyeballs.
0.5 m/s is almost 100 FPM. Lets look at 100 FPM. Maybe it is fast enough to take a wet bulb reading, it is a fast enough face velocity for an engineered and non-listed grease hood complying with NFPA 96, for realistic air conditioning (cooling) is a noticeable draft, but with the sirocco would it still require protective eye goggles?Maybe you could google goggles and let us know.