Mountain Valley School District Purchases 30 HEPA Filters

Harlem School District in Illinois will Install HEPA Room Air Purifiers and Require Face Masks

Medistar and Texas A&M Collaborate on a Nickel Foam Filter to Trap and Kill  COVID

Koch Filter Manufactures a Barrier Air Filtration Option for the Limitation of PRRS

Iowa Meat Processing Plant COVID Situation Worse than Originally Reported

Tyson Investing in Robots

UV Air Cleaners Installed by Tyson and JBS

MERV 13 Filter Shortage

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Mountain Valley School District Purchases 30 HEPA Filters

With  school starting across the country, many districts are updating their facilities to help students learn better than ever. The Mountain Valley Unified School District is taking it one step further, by purchasing thirty HEPA Air Purifiers to guarantee their students are breathing the healthiest air possible.

Because California is one of the fifteen worst states for air quality in America, the Mountain Valley Unified district took extra precaution and purchased these HEPA air purifiers to ensure nothing can hold back the education of their valued students. After all, some states are saying poor air quality is lowering grade point averages, which is the last thing that should be hindering kids’ mental growth.

Mountain Valley Unified is one of 12,884 school districts in the country.


Harlem School District in Illinois will Install HEPA Room Air Purifiers and Require Face Masks

Face masks will also be mandatory for all students, employees and visitors, unless a medical condition is verified by a physician.

Cleaning will be ramped up significantly, from teachers to bus drivers. There will be an emphasis on disinfecting any shared materials. Teachers will all be provided with the appropriate cleaning equipment. Classrooms and buses will be deep-cleaned daily.

Pending the School Board's approval, the District wants to purchase air purifiers with HEPA filters for classrooms, along with upgrading HVAC filters.

Masks will not be required for recess if six feet of social distancing can be maintained.

The District mentioned buses will be deep-cleaned before and after use, but there are more regulations for transportation. New routes will be created with a maximum number of 50 students on each bus and students from the same household will be assigned seats together. Buses will be sprayed with an electrostatic cleaner as a disinfectant.

Limits will be placed on visitors as well.

Medistar and Texas A&M Collaborate on a Nickel Foam Filter to Trap and Kill COVID

A collaboration inspired by Medistar Corp. and including researchers from the University of Houston and Texas A&M has developed a heating ventilating and air conditioning system filter, made from nickel foam, that can trap and instantly kill 99.8% of the coronavirus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, say the lead researchers on the team. The investigators also say the filter catches and destroys 99.9% of anthrax spores and other pathogens, including the legionella bacteria that causes Legionnaires' disease.

The biodefense indoor air protection system, currently under beta-testing at the InterContinental Hotel Houston Medical Center and soon to go into commercial production, can be custom-fitted to existing heating and cooling equipment in all types of HVAC systems in buildings, planes and ships, say the researchers.

The new filter, which in retrofits is inserted between the existing filter and the heating and cooling elements, distinguishes itself from a HEPA filter in that HEPA filters only trap the virus, says Zhifeng Ren, co-lead investigator and director of the Texas Center for Superconductivity at the University of Houston. The biodefense filter is better than a high-efficiency fiber filter because it kills the virus, making any filter changes and disposal much safer for maintenance workers.

The virus can’t survive temperatures above 70 degrees Centigrade. That led to the idea of a filter with an integral heating element. Ren suggested using nickel foam because it met several key requirements: It is porous, allowing the flow of air and it is electrically conductive, which allowed it to be heated. It is also flexible.

“Nothing can survive biologically” because the filter is heated to 200 degrees C to kill the pathogens, says Ren.

Ren and his research team collaborated with Monzer Hourani, the mastermind behind the filter and CEO of Medistar, a Houston-based medical real estate developer.

The researchers report that virus tests at the Galveston National Laboratory found 99.8% of the novel SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, was killed in a single pass through a filter made from commercially available nickel foam heated to 200 degrees C. The filter also killed 99.9% of the anthrax spores trapped by the filter in tests at the lab, which is run by the University of Texas (UT) Medical Branch.

Peel adds that the team did not test specifically for the bacteria that causes Legionnaires' disease, often found in HVAC mist given off by cooling towers. But because the filter is 99.9% effective for anthrax spores, "typically the gold standard for air disinfection," it also would destroy legionella and can catch and kill spores as small as 100 nanometers or as large as 1,000 nanometers."

Custom retrofits to HVAC systems would cost about $4 per sq. ft or $1,000 per ton of HVAC, says Garrett Peel, Ren's co-lead investigator, executive vice president of Medistar and founding partner and CEO of Medistar subsidiary Integrated Viral Protection Solutions (IVPS), which is commercializing the filter and would provide a custom retrofit service. Mobile air purifiers are also under development.

The company will deploy the filter first to places at highest risk of indoor transmission, including schools, health care facilities and transit facilities, Peel says.

The first units will go to schools in Texas, Florida and Arizona and to the InterContinental Hotel Houston Medical Center, which will be the first hotel in the world retrofitted with the technology, says Peel.

The phased roll out will be based on demand. IVPS expects to produce 20,000 units of initial capacity by late this year or early next year. “We have manufacturing partners that can meet this goal very easily,” says Peel. He adds that Medistar has invested “millions of dollars” in the product, mostly to commercialize it.

A custom filter measures about 4 ft x 4 ft depending on the size of the HVAC system. It is smaller for individual AC units.

Nickel foam has advantages but it also has low resistivity, making it difficult to raise the temperature high enough to quickly kill the virus, say the researchers. They solved that problem by folding the foam, connecting multiple compartments with integral electrical wires to increase the resistance enough to raise the temperature as high as 250 degrees C.

“There is HEPA filter technology” in both custom retrofit and mobile applications, says Ren. If the power fails, the filter will work the same way as a HEPA filter.

By wiring the filter itself so it is electrically heated internally, rather than heating it from an external source, researchers say they minimized the amount of heat that escapes from the filter, allowing air conditioning to function with minimal strain. “Four centimeters away from the heater, the temperature is the temperature of the environment,” says Peel.

The heat may increase cooling system operating costs 1% or 2%, adds Ren.

A prototype was built by a local workshop and first tested at the UH lab for the relationship between voltage/current and temperature. The Galveston lab then brought in a virologist and prepared samples of the virus. The samples were then aerosolized and run through a prototype filter in a sealed unit, says Sloban Paessler, a professor of pathology at the UT Medical Branch who led the Galveston tests.

The filtered air that came out of the unit was then tested using cell cultures. “We never discovered any infectious virus,” says Paessler. “The virus is either inactivated or trapped.”

Paessler says he can’t be sure the virus is killed by the filter because the lab did not collect test samples from the filter itself. “But with such high temperatures, I would be surprised if the virus was not deactivated,” he says.

Ren maintains that because the temperature on the filter is about 200 degree C, there is no reason to believe any virus on the filter can survive. The likelihood of survival is about the same as the likelihood that “the sky will fall tomorrow,” he adds.

Beyond that, the 99.8 % of virus kill was validated in recent repeat experiments on a newer test. The results also showed that 99.97% of anthrax spores were killed. “These data are sufficient to suggest the unprecedented eradication of such biopathogens through a sub second exposure to treatment through this novel nickel mesh,” says Ren. 

Koch Filter Manufactures a Barrier Air Filtration Option for the Limitation of PRRS

The need to battle viruses in pork production starts long before the processing plant.

PRRS is an acronym (porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome) for a viral disease characterized by two overlapping clinical presentations, reproductive impairment or failure in breeding animals, and respiratory disease in pigs of any age. PRRS is the most economically significant disease to affect US swine production since the eradication of classical swine fever (CSF).

Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV) occurs in all age groups. Reproductive impairment or failure, more obvious in sows or gilts, also affects some boars. The respiratory syndrome is seen more often in young growing pigs but also occurs in naïve finishing pigs and breeding stock.

Although reported initially in only a few countries in the late 1980s, PRRS now occurs worldwide in most major swine-raising countries. PRRS is prevalent in the United States and exists both in epidemic and endemic forms.

In the US, the clinical disease was first described in 1987-88 in North Carolina, Iowa and Minnesota. Several outbreaks in Indiana were reported in 1989-90. During the subsequent decade, PRRS spread rapidly, both in Europe and North America. By the end of 1992 the disease was reported in Canada, Great Britain and several European countries. Two distinct strains of virus, one in Europe and one in the United States, were characterized as genetically different but are clinically similar in most respects. Both are now in the United States, along with a multitude of viral variants.

During the past 20 years, there has been much research on the PRRS virus. Although much now is known about the virus, details on control of the disease for all types of swine-raising operations are far from complete. PRRS is the most economically important disease now affecting producers. Swine industry consolidation of the past 15 years has led to entire production systems being designed around strategies for controlling or eliminating this disease.

It is important to maintain a PRRS negative herd. Any means to prevent aerosol transmission of these agents is important. One important approach is in the application of air filtration systems.

Koch says its v-bank style filters work by interception — particles adhere to the fibers of the filter and become trapped. Using pre-filters helps in capture large particles, extending the life of the main filter (commonly a DuraMAX 4vS-16....MERV 16 rating). The DuraMAX 4vS-16 filter is designed to capture very small particles that carry pathogens such as porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) virus. Utilizing air filtration to minimize the transmission of aerosol viruses offers a good return on investment.

Iowa Meat Processing Plant COVID Situation Worse than Originally Reported

The first confirmed coronavirus outbreak at an Iowa meatpacking plant was far more severe than previously known, with more than twice as many workers becoming infected than the state Department of Public Health told the public, newly released records show.

The department announced at a May 5 news conference that 221 employees at the Tyson Foods pork processing plant in Columbus Junction had tested positive for COVID-19.

But days earlier, Tyson officials told Iowa workplace safety regulators during an inspection that 522 plant employees had been infected to their knowledge, documents obtained through the open records law show.

A dozen of the plant's roughly 1,300 workers were believed to have been hospitalized by then, and two died after contracting the virus, Tyson officials told the Iowa Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

The discrepancy adds to mounting questions that the state health department faces about its handling of public information during the pandemic. The department in mid-July forced out its longtime spokeswoman, who said she was ousted for pushing hard to fulfill media requests and that the agency's delays and scripted talking points were embarrassing.

The agency has also faced criticism for seeking to charge thousands of dollars for open records requests and for not routinely announcing outbreaks in workplaces, among other things. The department said it has "gone above and beyond to provide up-to-date and comprehensive information" to the public.

The early April outbreak in Columbus Junction was the first of several at meatpacking plants across the state as the virus spread through crowded workplaces.

Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds took a pro-industry approach to managing those outbreaks in Iowa, the top pork-producing state. She worked with executives to continue production even as thousands of workers became infected and some died, and she applauded President Donald Trump's order to keep such plants open throughout the country.

On May 5, Reynolds said at her then-daily news briefing that the public health department had been compiling data from surveillance testing to track outbreaks, which the state defines as at least 10 percent of employees absent or ill.

She turned over the podium to health department's deputy director, Sarah Reisetter, who said the Tyson plants in Columbus Junction, Perry and Waterloo and two other workplaces had confirmed outbreaks. Reisetter said the Waterloo plant had 444 positive cases, but county officials said days later it actually had more than 1,000.

As for Columbus Junction, department spokeswoman Amy McCoy said the 221 case figure announced by Reisetter reflected the results of the department’s testing and what it “could verify from our data systems" at the time.

“Keep in mind, we had just established an outbreak definition, and wanted to share the information we had available,” she said. “Since that initial round of testing back in April, the testing reporting process has significantly improved.”

The department never updated the number of confirmed infections in Columbus Junction. Unlike outbreaks at long-term care facilities, the department does not post workplace outbreaks on the state’s coronavirus website.

At the May 5 briefing, Reisetter said that the 221 cases reflected 26 percent of those tested, which would be 850 total tests.

Tyson spokesman Gary Mickelson said the number of infections announced by the state appeared to reflect only the first round of testing at the plant and that additional testing had uncovered hundreds of more cases.

“Coordinating facility-wide testing and obtaining results is a complex process that takes time,” he said.

But it's unclear why the department would not have the full testing results that Tyson described to Iowa OSHA. The department, along with county health officials, had conducted the mass testing of workers weeks earlier.

Tyson officials said they learned of the first case in Columbus Junction on April 1 and idled the plant four days later after 29 workers tested positive, according to an Iowa OSHA inspection report.

The governor sent 1,100 testing kits to the county for testing during the two-week shutdown. The plant reopened April 20 with new safety measures, and Mickelson said the company isn't aware of any current infections there.

Iowa OSHA opened an inquiry after seeing media reports that two workers had died from the virus and inspected the plant on April 30, walking through and meeting with several Tyson officials.

“There were 522 positive COVID-19 cases to the best of the company’s knowledge,” the inspection report says.

Tyson's plant manager told inspectors that communication between the company and public health officials was “not efficient” and that information about the positive cases wasn't available for days after testing, the report said.

Iowa OSHA did not cite Tyson for any workplace safety violations, saying the company “was trying to follow the best CDC guidance at the given time” and recommendations were rapidly changing.

Tyson Investing in Robots

Tyson Foods is reportedly accelerating development of robotic technology designed to handle processes like deboning the 39 million chickens that go through the company's plants each week, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal.

While the project has been in the works for several years, the meatpacking company increased urgency around the effort in the wake of a rash of coronavirus outbreaks across its facilities starting in May. Tyson, as well as competitors like Smithfield Foods, quickly became hot spots for spreading the virus, sickening workers and prompting temporary closures that led to national meat shortages. 

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there have been a total of 16,233 coronavirus cases in meat processing facilities across 23 states in the U.S. As of July 10, these illnesses have contributed to 86 deaths, the CDC findings show.

Meat and poultry processing facilities face distinctive challenges in the control of infectious diseases, including COVID-19," the CDC report states. "COVID-19 outbreaks among meat and poultry processing facility workers can rapidly affect large numbers of persons." 

Tyson Foods CEO Noel White told the Wall Street Journal that the company has already invested $500 million in robotics since 2017 and has plans to ramp up the project amid the coronavirus. Tyson currently has a dedicated facility on its Springdale, Arkansas headquarters where engineers and scientists are testing and developing meat processing robots. 

Tyson is not the only meat behemoth turning its sites to robotics. Competitors like JBC and Pilgrim's Pride have also working on developing similar automated robotic technology in recent years. "They are much closer to what the person can do than seven years ago," JBS CEO Andre Nogueira told the Wall Street Journal. 

While automated robots could reduce exposure to the coronavirus and help prevent employees from working in close proximity, some have concerns that they could take the place of human jobs in an economy that has left 21 million Americans unemployed. Further, many of these workers are already earning comparatively low wages to other individuals in similarly hazardous lines of work, at an average of $15.92 an hour. Construction workers, for example, earn an average of $28.51 an hour, according to the US Labor Department. 

UV Air Cleaners Installed by Tyson and JBS

Two of the world’s largest meatpackers said on Friday they have installed ultraviolet air cleaning equipment in some U.S. plants, as pressure mounts on food companies to protect workers amid growing concerns about airborne transmission of the coronavirus.

JBS USA, owned by Brazil’s JBS SA and one of four major U.S. beef processors, said it installed “ultraviolet germicidal air sanitation” equipment in plant ventilation and air purification systems that use a specific frequency range of light waves to kill germs.

Tyson Foods Inc, which produces beef, pork and chicken, said it is doing extensive research on air flow and testing ultraviolet air treatment systems across several plants. It is not known whether such technologies kill the new coronavirus.

The moves underscore the mounting pressure to protect workers in the U.S. meat industry, which has seen more than 16,000 plant employees in 23 states infected with COVID-19 and 86 worker deaths related to the respiratory disease.

Plant employees and their families have said processors like JBS and Tyson Foods told sick workers to show up at plants and moved too slowly to protect them with social distancing and equipment like masks.

As worker infections grew, so have meatpackers’ legal problems. In one case, the family of a Pennsylvania man who died from COVID-19 sued JBS USA parent company JBS SA for failing to protect him at the meat plant where he worked.

Low temperatures, which generally allow viruses to survive in the air longer, and crowded working conditions have made meatpacking plants global coronavirus hotspots.

In Germany, a COVID-19 outbreak forced meatpacking plants to review infection risks posed by their cooling systems. One meatpacker had to install high-efficiency HEPA filters before being allowed to reopen.

The World Health Organization last week acknowledged “evidence emerging” of the airborne spread of the novel coronavirus.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended meat companies consider consulting engineers to ensure adequate ventilation in work areas, but has not required changes to air systems.

JBS told Reuters it also installed “plasma air cleaning technology” in U.S. plants that uses bipolar ionization to neutralize particulates in the air, including virus cells and bacteria.

MERV 13 Filter Shortage

Public health agencies and regional governments around the U.S. and world are pushing managers of large indoor spaces to upgrade the filtration used in their heating and air-conditioning systems as a way to combat the spread of the coronavirus. But some HVAC industry leaders warn that supplies of the recommended filters, known as MERV-13, are insufficient to meet mounting demand—and will be for the foreseeable future.

“We’re 60 days out on our MERV-13 supply,” says Danny Miller, president of HVAC engineering firm Transformative Wave. “[If] this moves from a recommendation from the CDC to a regulatory requirement, frankly these guys are screwed, because the supply doesn’t exist right now. This is going to be a crisis.”

“There’s no way,” Rob Castor, vice president of sales for air filter manufacturer AAF International, says of the possibility of rapidly upgrading filters on air-handling systems nationwide. “It’s not going to happen.”

Under normal conditions, the higher-density MERV-13 filters are in demand only from industrial or medical facilities with specific air quality concerns, making up just about 5% of HVAC filter demand. Demand has increased by as much as 10 times, experts estimate. But filter supply is unlikely to keep up because of the high cost of increasing production capacity for what could be a short-term demand spike.

Terry Ritchie, national sales lead for filter manufacturer Trion, says wait times for MERV-13 filters ordered from his company have roughly doubled, from two weeks to four weeks, and he is confident the delays will get longer. Grainger, a major industrial supply wholesaler, reports that it has completely depleted its stock of MERV-13 filters on hand due to pandemic-driven demand.

Castor says some filter manufacturers have already begun “allocating” stock or only partially filling orders in order to distribute supply more evenly. He says AAF may have to begin doing the same soon.

We’re trying to give [filters] to everyone we can,” says Castor, “But we’ve got to divvy it up.”

Others in the industry say they have not yet experienced filter shortages, including manufacturer Aprilaire and facilities management company C&W Services. According to industry leaders, organizations that had existing supplier relationships, such as building servicers or hospitals, may not bear the full brunt of shortages, which would instead fall on facilities such as malls and schools seeking the enhanced filters for the first time.

A shortage of MERV-13 HVAC filters could create a significant constraint on the ability of offices, retailers, and schools to reopen safely. That, in turn, could further constrain an already profoundly threatened U.S. economy.

Filter manufacturers say they are doing everything in their power, including running double shifts at factories, to stave off shortages. But manufacturers told Fortune that the main constraint on MERV-13 supplies is a precursor material known as filter media. Machinery for creating MERV-13-class filter media is very costly, making major capacity increases financially risky for the firms that produce it, since the current demand surge may prove temporary.

Filter media producers sell their product in bulk to companies such as AAF who turn it into HVAC filters. But the media is also used for emergency respirators and for the masks that have become commonplace in the pandemic era. Some industry leaders say the increased demand for MERV-13 media for use in masks and respirators has exacerbated the shortage for HVAC filters.

Enhanced filtration is just one of a number of measures for mitigating the risk of indoor coronavirus transmission. Others include increasing fresh air flow into a building and enhanced disinfection of surfaces. Another option for increasing indoor air safety, according to C&W Services CEO Paul Bedborough, is bipolar ionization, which is a relatively simple upgrade for HVAC systems and can kill 99.9% of microbes using charged atoms.

But as with the combination of face masks and social distancing, these solutions are likely to work best in combination. A major shortage of climate-control filters capable of stopping the coronavirus would mean one less layer of protection for Americans who increasingly find themselves pressured to return to school, work, and daily life as the pandemic’s toll continues to mount.