What is this Clean the Air stuff you’re talking about?

Vaccines and masks aren’t enough to protect everyone from airborne viruses. Especially Covid19. We can take action to protect ourselves and those we love. Masks significantly increase individual protection, but not in environments where there is low air exchange and a number of people. We need vaccines (Covid and Flu) PLUS ventilation, filtration, and high-quality masks. These things together significantly reduce the risk of infection.

TLDR in two images:

When we remove viral particles from the air, people don’t breathe them in. Easy as pie.

Jump down if you want to know more about how, but for right now, a little about why.

Viral particles in aerosols are incredibly infectious. Also, unlike sneezes and coughs, they are not noticeable around us. Early in the pandemic, we were wearing whatever covering we could over our faces to stop sneezes and coughs. Unfortunately, we got used to the comfort and didn’t realize that these coverings didn’t protect us from the biggest risk. This is part of why lockdown saved so many lives.

But Covid’s pretty over, right?
Alas, no.

Although the peaks of Covid, RSV, Influenza, or other airborne diseases are called “low” that usually means relative to when it’s high. And Covid had HUGE high peaks. RSV, flu, and other viruses go down to zero when they are low. But Covid is constantly circulating. Instead of high then dry, Covid is higher and highish. But compared to the giant waves, it appears “low” on a graph. Still, it is a high baseline. Especially compared with other viruses with a baseline of zero.

Covid tests are expensive, and many people don’t test, or only test on one day and assume a negative will remain negative going forward. Unfortunately, this contributes to circulating Covid. More, although many people who get Covid and get very sick during the acute phase, others who are vaccinated sometimes find their first infection is nearly unnoticeable and assume it’s allergies or a cold. Then they accidentally exhale viral particles at church, work, the grocery store, and visiting grandma. To people who don’t think they are vulnerable, it feels over.

If we think it’s mostly over, it’s easy to ignore what we need to do to reduce the transmission of an airborne virus:

• Reduced mixing in crowded, indoor environments
• Ensuring adequate ventilation of indoor spaces
• Filtering the air using properly rated filters to extract viral particles
• Wearing high-quality masks (respirators) that have electrostatic layers that literally trap viral particles (N95, KN95, FFP2, N99, FFP3, N100)

If you’ve been following me on Facebook, you’ll have noticed that I’ve written a lot about how much more serious Covid continues to be than the public health/government/journalism messaging. Scientists are doing amazing research and producing papers, but the info is not getting to the people. I am not a scientist. I am an educator. And on this page, I am less interested in persuading you how serious Covid is to everyone, than I am in helping you understand that it is our collective responsibility to keep one another safe as possible, and that it is not complicated.

Once lockdowns and early spikes were over, it felt… over. I get this. Unfortunately, it’s not over, and this phase of the pandemic (and yes, it’s still a pandemic, it has not yet reached the endemic stage) is risky because it is so easy to take risks we don’t even know are risks. There are thousands and thousands and more thousands of people who can’t go out in public because the air is not safe. Can’t go to church. Are still only eating outdoors, if that. Are still paying a premium for delivered groceries. Have left jobs because the working environment isn’t safe. And on the other end, there are those who have lost jobs and homes because the physical impact of long covid disease made it impossible to work.

If you’ve been in smoke from wildfires, you understand how air can impact people. In the case of smoke, we notice it’s in the air. In the case of viruses, there’s no noticing that it’s in the air until after one has been infected. So we have to choose to behave as if we know the risk is there. We choose to mitigate air quality both personally and collectively.

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5 Air Changes per Hour (ACH).
Breathed air out, clean air in.

New CDC Standards of Air Hygiene

16 May 2023, The John Snow Project

“Last week, the US Center For Disease Control (CDC) announced changes to its guidelines for parents, carers, schools and Early Care and Education programs.

In addition to advising people who have “symptoms of respiratory or gastrointestinal infections, such as cough, fever, sore throat, vomiting, or diarrhea” to stay home, the CDC also recommended that children over the age of two wear masks whenever possible.

This is not surprising because as the CDC notes, “COVID-19 can cause serious health problems, so it’s more important than ever to protect your child’s health.”

Last week, the CDC also recommended new standards for ventilation and filtration in public buildings.
The 7-point plan says:

• Aim for 5
  • Aim to deliver 5 or more air changes per hour (ACH) of clean air to rooms in your building. This will help reduce the number of viral particles in the air. You may need to use a combination of ventilation (air supply, filtration, and air treatment) strategies to reach this target.
• Upgrade filters
  • Use filters rated MERV-13 or higher, when possible. Using higher-rated filters in your heating or air conditioning system can remove more germs in the air than lower-rated filters.
• Turn your HVAC system “ON”
  • Set your ventilation system to circulate more air when people are in the building. You can do this by setting the thermostat’s fan control to the “ON” position instead of “AUTO.” This will make the fan operate continuously but can increase fan energy use, so limit use to when needed.
• Add fresh air
  • Bring more clean outdoor air into spaces by opening windows and doors and using exhaust fans. Even small openings can help.
• Use air cleaners
  • Air cleaners (also known as air purifiers) filter air with high-efficiency filters that remove germs from the air. Choose one that’s the right size for your space.
• Install UV air treatment systems
  • UV air treatment systems can kill germs in the air. They can also provide a high level of effective air changes per hour while using little energy.
• Use portable carbon dioxide (CO2) monitors
  • A portable CO2 monitor can help you determine how stale or fresh the air is in rooms. Readings above 600 parts per million (ppm) suggest that you may need to bring more fresh, outdoor air into the space.

With growing evidence of the long-term harms of COVID-19 and the likelihood of ‘textbook’ harm to the immune system, it is not surprising the CDC is setting new standards to try to reduce transmission rates of a virus, which, thanks to a complacent international response, is not going away.

After years of ill-informed, speculative opinion pieces and social media commentary that said COVID-19 did not seriously affect children, new research adds to the existing body of evidence that suggests children experience the long-term impacts of infection at the same rate as adults, and that the risk does not diminish with subsequent reinfection.

With people more likely to dismiss children as ‘making a fuss’ or ‘malingering’ it is unsurprising their voices haven’t really been heard, but now, three years into the pandemic, major public health agencies are recognizing the harms of allowing widespread transmission of a SARS coronavirus and are asking individuals and organizations to play their part in reducing the spread of SARS-CoV-2 and the harms of COVID-19.”

Clean the Air in Classrooms (and churches, and offices and…..)

Click here for a breakdown of this image by the author.

How cool is that! They even showed their work!
You can click here for another graphic, Clean air at work

DIY CR boxes compared to portable air cleaners. click here for some of the original work, by Marwa Zaatari, mechanical engineer, ASHRAE epidemic Task Force.

Cleaning the air is a privilege. Use it.

The World Health Organization is doubling down on recommending masking and avoiding crowded places. It is a privilege to be able to use air filtration systems in heating/cooling systems as described above and have control over fresh air flow. Most of the world must only rely on masking and distancing. The people I’m likely talking to on this page (I’m looking at you USAmerican churches, schools, and social service agencies) have much more privilege and therefore choices.

What did the WHO mean when they declare Covid “no longer a public health emergency of international concern?” That it’s over? No. That’s just an epidemiological category. Read more here.

Ventilation in Buildings | CDC

Jose-Luis Jimenez is a CU Boulder professor whose expertise includes aerosols, atmospheric chemistry and disease transmission. He uses a carbon dioxide measuring device as a proxy for gauging the possible presence of COVID-19 in the air at Denver International Airport on Monday, Oct. 18, 2022. Think like an aerosol scientist. on Colorado Public Radio.

In 1918 they were right! Open all the windows!
This takes other people’s breath right out the window!

We now have the capacity to measure this. Measuring CO2 can give you an indication of how much air you are “rebreathing”!

That is to say, do you know how much of the air you are inhaling is made up of the exhalations of others?

When CO2 is at 600, you are rebreathing .5%. When it’s at 800 you are rebreathing 1%. When CO2 is at 1200, 2% of the air you inhale is other people’s exhaled air. When CO2 is at 2400, 5% of the air you breathe has been exhaled by others. (The CDC recently set classroom air safety CO2 at 800. ASHRAE sets it at 600.) ASHRAE is the American Society of Heating Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Engineers. Their new guidelines are available here.

Distinguished professor of chemistry at the University of Colorado, Dr. José-Luis Jimenez traveled for a conference and kept track of and shared what he found on buses, Ubers, airplanes, coffee shops, airports, luggage lines, hotel rooms conference rooms, and more. This is eye-opening and well-worth reading his tweets as he travels. Understanding CO2 can help you make decisions about when and where to wear masks

When air is kept super clean and fresh, it’s significantly safer for everyone. The challenge is that on our own, without scientific measurements, it’s very difficult to know if the air is actually fresh — or if it is, how fresh.
CO2 meters, (the more expensive NDIR types are more accurate, but the less expensive ones are ok too) help us make informed decisions.

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CR Boxes are awesome. They clean a lot of air in a short time. Instructions to make a Corsi-Rosenthal box can be found here

PS. CR Boxes also reduce PFAS and phthalates. And, you know, dust and animal dander and other things that make people unwell.

Traditional homemade CR Boxes are also loud. I use a combination of CR boxes, HEPA filtration systems, and these ultra-quiet fan kits pictured below. Like CR Boxes, they use MERV 13 filters to capture viral particles, but by using high-powered computer fans, they are super quiet.
I run the large, loud box-fan based CR boxes on high before/after an event, during the event when people are not talking, or taking a break. They get turned down to low when people are praying, talking, meditating, or listening. The Clean Air Kit fans stay on all the time.

You can experience these super quiet Air Filtration systems at the UU Entrepreneurial Ministries booth, and there is also one in the Sofia for UUA President booth. BONUS! These can be purchased and put together, or arrive as a kit to be put together by kids as a STEM or UU RE Maker Space project. I do not make any income from recommending this start-up company.

How do I know what kind of air filter I need to buy or get for my classroom/office/worship space? HEPA? Homemade CR Box or computer fan kit?
Well, there’s a tool for that!

Air Filters – Clean Air Stars has a tool that will let you input specs for the space and, using measurements aerosol scientists have been making for the last years, calculate how many of what type of filtration systems you might add to your space. This is not designed to measure the large building furnace systems but is for classrooms and other spaces where we want to increase the cleanliness of the air. For instance, I am going somewhere this summer and I found out that the furnace filters are MERV 8 and clean air exchange is (still confusing.) MERV 8 does fine for dust, but nothing for viral particles. So I know that I have to increase other precautions.

In other news UUs can use, at General Assembly, I am walking around with a CO2 meter everywhere I go. Ask me how we’re doing! I look forward to discovering the air exchange of the convention center!

There will be candy and info about Clean Air for Community Care, silicone bracelets, and KN95 and N95 masks for anyone who wants to level up from the paper procedure masks to masks that have electrostatic filtering layers that trap viral particles at the UU entrepreneurial Ministries table.

Preemptive Radical Inclusion.

All of us means all of us.

Clean Air, Community Care.

CovidStudies | Zotero