Clean  Bubbles are the Short Term COVID Solution

Masks will Steadily Reduce Risk

Essential Role of Mask Suppliers

Contagious Variant Spreading

Twenty-five More Fitness Centers in San Diego Suing to Allow Indoor Operation

One Hundred Fifty Fans can attend Minnesota High School Sport Events

Birmingham Public Schools Open with MERV 13 Filters

Bubble Cleanliness Assured with Proper Monitoring

Honeywell Particulate Monitors can be Used in Clean Bubbles

Volcanoes Create Additional Needs for Air Filters and Masks

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Clean  Bubbles are the Short Term COVID Solution

More than 1% of people in the U.S. and several other countries are presently infectious. The percentage is growing in most countries as the new variant virus spreads. Governments can react by further restricting activity with lockdowns and restricted access.  But there is another option which is the Clean Bubble

There are laws which limit the individual occupancy in a store or school to 25%. This means that 25% of the virus load is still present. With products which are available now and are not prohibitively expensive 99% of the virus can be captured. So the Clean Bubble will be equivalent to a building with just 1% occupancy. The 99% virus reduction compares favorably to any other option whether it is vaccines at 94% or partitions at a paltry 10%.

 

The foundation of the bubble is tight fitting efficient masks. In areas where it is inconvenient to be wearing the masks or where excessive crowding is likely fan filter units and air purifiers are needed. All space needs to be monitored for particulate and CO2. Any entrant to the safe bubble will be scrutinized to insure that his mask is the correct type and worn properly.

Clean bubble example: A large department store operates a safe bubble. Any entrant to the store will be checked to see that he has a certified mask and that it is being worn properly. If the entrant does not qualify he can enter a store area with high air filtration efficiency where he can buy a mask of the right design and size. The store will offer quantitative fit testing and provide him with certification.

If there are 2000 people in the store on average twenty of them will be infectious. The challenge for any protective device is that the position of the transmitter and recipient keep changing. A partition has zero impact if the transmitter is upwind of the recipient. The virus like perfume just flows around the partition.

The one protective device which is always between the transmitter and recipient is the mask. In fact when both are wearing masks there are two protection devices in between. Masks are now available  with 90% Fitted Filter Efficiency (FFE). If both transmitter and recipient are wearing 90% FFE masks the virus risk is reduced  by 99%.

Installing MERV 16 or better filters can capture 98% of the virus passing through but it will not necessarily be between transmitter and recipient but it could add an additional 0.5% risk reduction to  99.5% .

General Area Risk Reduction

This brings the total risk reduction in the general areas to 99.5%.

Assume that the average customer spends 5% of his time in the food court. The odds are that one infectious person will be in the food court area.  If everyone is wearing their masks in food lines and only removing them when at the dining tables, the risk is further reduced.

Assume the dining area has ceiling fan filter units which result in an 98% virus capture but only 80% effectiveness due to the position of the transmitter relative to recipients. The transmitter has his mask off in the food court a total of 2.5% of his store time. 80% of the virus is removed. So the additional risk is 0.5%.

 

Therefore the total risk is 1% compared to a store with no protection. The bubble is relatively safe compared to any other practical alternative

Masks will Steadily Reduce Risk

The above example was based on 20 infected people in a group of 2000. If everyone wears a tight fitting efficient mask routinely the ratio of infected people will quickly fall from the 1% level. When the infectious rate drops to 2 per 2000 the infection risk is reduced to 0.1% compared to the present.

Essential Role of Mask Suppliers

Billions of people around the world are wearing inefficient loose fitting masks.  If everyone were wearing tight fitting, efficient masks schools, fitness centers, and office buildings  would be 70 times safer than they are now.

 

 

A Clean Bubble initiative will result in the widespread use of Comfortable, Attractive, Tight fitting Efficient CATER masks. Temporary reliance on upgraded disposable masks with components to insure a tight fit will also be needed to create the clean bubbles. Use of poor disposable (Poor D) masks will gradually disappear.

A huge market of hundreds of billions of dollars will be created very quickly. The route to market will be radically changed. Presently masks are sold on line without credible information relative to performance. With the Clean Bubble initiative, each Clean Bubble operator will be involved in mask selection.

Meat processors, airlines, department stores schools. office buildings movie theatres and other building operators will be tasked with making sure that each entrant has a mask which not only has the performance characteristics but is also being worn properly. The result will be that most masks will be sold through the Clean Bubble operators rather than on line.

McIlvaine is identifying the likely safe bubble operators, the numbers of masks they can sell, and the way they will be sold.  For an example, a large university can create a safe bubble on a campus where students, faculty, visitors, and service personnel can total 100,000 people. The masks can be sold in the University Store along with a service to help select the right size and  provide fit checking.

Fitness centers can provide fit testing and provide certificates that an individual is wearing the right size of qualified mask. They can also provide fit testing for other Clean Bubble operators in their vicinity.

Meat processors, nursing homes, airlines, hotels, and other facilities where people congregate will combine screening with provision of masks.

The McIlvaine Company with the Mask Supplier Support Program is providing guidance on the Clean Bubbles, identification of Clean Bubble operators around the world and methods to successfully market masks. For more information on the program contact Bob McIlvaine at 847 226 2391 or rmcilvaine@mcilvainecompany.com.

Contagious Variant Spreading

The more contagious coronavirus variant that has brought Britain to its knees in recent weeks is showing signs that it is spreading widely throughout the United States, health officials and experts said this week.

So far, the reported cases have been mostly isolated: one in New York, one in Florida, one in Georgia and two in Colorado. But California has been another story, with 32 cases of the variant now reported in San Diego County.

"I would be surprised if that [number] doesn't grow pretty rapidly," Dr. Francis Collins, head of the National Institutes of Health, told the Washington Post on Wednesday.

An official from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention agreed.

"Here at the CDC, we're definitely taking this seriously, and we're assuming for now that this variant is more transmissible," said Greg Armstrong, the leader of the CDC's strain surveillance program. The British variant "is probably not in every state at this point, but I think in a lot of states."

While the variant shows no signs of being more deadly than the original version of the virus, it could send more people into hospitals, up the number of COVID-19 deaths, and prolong the effort to reach herd immunity in this country, the Post reported.

Herd immunity will be reached when the virus encounters enough people with immunity that it dies out. Unfortunately, the percentage of people who need to be immune for a population to achieve herd immunity is higher for more infectious pathogens.

"We are in a race against time," said Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in Baltimore. "We need to increase our speed in which we act so that we don't allow this virus to spread further and allow this variant to become the dominant one in circulation. The clock is ticking."

In addition to the herd immunity issue, any variants could limit the power of antibody treatments because those treatments are so narrowly focused.

The implications for vaccines are less clear in the long run because the virus will continue to mutate, though the consensus is that the new coronavirus vaccines will likely still work because they trigger the creation of a broad array of neutralizing antibodies and other immune system responses. In addition, the mRNA (messenger RNA) vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna can be altered if necessary, the Post reported.

Still, the need to vaccinate as many people as possible as quickly as possible has become more urgent, and some scientists have argued that cutting doses in half or delaying the second dose might be necessary to reach that goal. But the U.S. Food and Drug Administration this week said it would stick with the two-shot dose backed by randomized clinical trials.

Twenty-five More Fitness Centers in San Diego Suing to Allow Indoor Operation

Twenty-five more fitness centers are suing San Diego County and state officials over coronavirus-related restrictions that prevent them from operating indoors — regulations they say violate their constitutional rights and the rights of their members.

The suit joins several others that have been filed on behalf of dozens of businesses, from churches to strip clubs, that have chosen to push back against sweeping state and county regulations in court.

Like those before it, the lawsuit seeks an injunction that would allow the fitness centers to resume indoor operations while preserving some health and safety regulations set by the county.

One Hundred Fifty Fans can attend Minnesota High School Sport Events

Fans will be permitted at games in gyms and arenas, with up to 250 at outdoor events. 

After approving the restart of Minnesota high school and youth sports practice and allowing teams to resume playing games, Gov. Tim Walz answered one last big question Wednesday:

Fans can be there, too, but their numbers will be limited.

Indoor venues such as gyms and arenas must limit capacity to 25%, with a maximum of up to 150 people, the governor announced as part of loosening several restrictions he ordered to counter the COVID-19 pandemic. Up to 250 people can attend at outdoor events.

Officials from the Minnesota State High School League believe that teams, officials and other personnel essential to the game are not counted toward those venue limits, as was the case during the fall.

High school games are approved to begin Jan. 14. Use of masks will continue to be required.

 

Walz's updated order limits capacity at fitness centers, which also reopened Monday, to 25% capacity and with nine feet of social distancing between people and machines. Fitness classes can increase to 25 people, with social distancing and mask requirements.

The changes come with Minnesota seeing a substantial decline in its COVID-19 positivity rate. A surge in November, attributed to community transmission of the virus, led to the state shutting down football and volleyball early and delaying the start of winter sports.

The high school league plans to post updated guidance to its member schools regarding the order's spectator limits on its website. It's also expected to be shared with athletic directors and other school officials at a weekly league meeting on Thursday. Similar to guidance provided for fall sports, schools will have control over how to implement the limits.

Managing crowds with the new limits could be more challenging this winter in sports where high-profile athletes and matchups between top teams can fill arenas and gyms. Last winter basketball stars Paige Bueckers and Jalen Suggs routinely attracted big crowds, including casual fans and others, almost every time they took the floor.

Those limits vary in some respects from what was in place during the fall for indoor venues.

Many schools did not allow fans at girls' swimming meets last fall. Some meets were held with opponents competing in different pools.

However, the 250-person limit was instituted for volleyball, which initially had been delayed until spring. The guidance, from the Minnesota Department of Education, came out on Oct. 8, the same day regular season matches were set to begin.

For outdoor events, the 250-person limit mirrors what was allowed at football and soccer games. Schools were allowed to be more restrictive, and some that were in distance learning did not permit fans. Most that allowed fans established systems for making tickets available, often limiting them to two per athlete.

Birmingham Public Schools Open with MERV 13 Filters

Several steps have been taken by Birmingham Public Schools leadership to prepare school buildings to welcome children beginning next Monday after they have been closed to pupils since November.

During a study session of the district's board of education Tuesday morning, Interim Superintendent George Heitsch and Assistant Superintendent for Business Services Jim Larson-Shidler spoke about the efforts to improve air filtration in buildings.

Larson-Shidler said the district has worked to install Minimum Efficiency Reporting Values 13 filters throughout buildings in the district, per recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control. He said the district had already started that process when the recommendation came through. 

"In late August, the CDC came out with the guidelines to go to MERV 13 filters as a way of filtering the air," he said. "We were already doing that."

The district plans to welcome students from kindergarten through eighth grade back to school beginning Monday. High school students will return to school beginning Jan. 19. Students will return in a hybrid model, with younger students attending school in-person for half-days five days a week, while high school students would be in-person two full days a week.

Some buildings and rooms did not have the capacity for the MERV 13 filters, Larson-Shidler said. Some frames at Groves and Seaholm high schools would not fit the filters, so instead, the district installed ultraviolet lights instead, which are designed to kill viruses such as the one that causes COVID-19.

"We installed UV lights in all of the Seaholm and Groves classroom units, and that has the same or better (result) than the MERV 13 filter," he said.

In addition, some individual rooms in other buildings, such as Bingham Farms Elementary School and Berkshire Middle School, that could not fit the filter also had UV lights installed, Larson-Shidler said.

In addition to the filters, he said the buildings are running their heating systems more often and earlier to get air circulating in them before they become populated.

"We're letting it run a little bit longer and also turning it on faster in the morning," he said. "We're turning it on about two hours before, so it'll get up to temperature then also flow through and start that 5-6 times per hour. That's getting the air that wasn't circulating as much at night, getting that moving earlier."

Discussing the circulation, Treasurer Amy Hochkammer said she wanted to address the building temperatures, as she said she had heard from students that they were having to keep their jackets on during class because of the building's temperatures.

"My daughter, when she was at Seaholm, literally wore her coat throughout class all day long," she said. "A lot of kids say the buildings are just cold."

Larson-Shidler said with the buildings running their circulators, it's possible the air coming in from outside could make the buildings a little cooler. He said one way to combat that would be to possibly increase the thermostat temperature a few degrees.

Bubble Cleanliness Assured with Proper Monitoring

The Clean Bubble initiative depends on proper monitoring.  In our July 15 CTS we covered our interview with  Ellie Amirnasr, and Marcel Schoch of qlAir.  A big potential for balancing air quality management, equipment maintenance and energy savings lies within broader use of sensors, data analytics and IoT (Internet of Things). Continuous air quality monitoring can be used to identify critical areas and patterns in indoor air quality and to select appropriate mitigation solutions. Combined with tracking and analyzing filter performance over time and the usage of an optimized ventilation schedule based on real data, “Clean Air as a Service” with access to a large portfolio of filtration products, filter delivery on time and guaranteed air quality will be provided.

By measuring the particle size in the outdoor air  (both PM 2.5 and PM 10) and then the particle size of the indoor air at various locations in a building information about COVID is gained.  There is a general correlation between air pollution levels and COVID mortality. More directly the particle reduction percentage across an air filter in an HVAC system can be used as surrogate for virus removal. If the PM 2.5 particle reduction is 70 percent it is likely that the virus reduction is 70 percent.

CO2 is another indicator. It is a reflection of the amount of outside dilution air. It can also indicate the number of individuals in a space. This can be used with other software tracking to determine the degree of social distancing taking place.

The full interview can be viewed at   https://youtu.be/T0HJF5MVDU0

Honeywell Particulate Monitors can be Used in Clean Bubbles

Honeywell’s HPM series particle sensor is designed to work in heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems and consumer products such air purifiers to measure air quality in homes, buildings, and public spaces.

The sensor has already been incorporated in Honeywell’s new PM2.5 Indoor Air Quality Detector, a portable air monitor for consumers in China.

What is the HPM Series designed to do?

The HPM Series is designed to detect airborne particulates in the PM2.5, PM10 ranges (standard) and in the PM1.0, PM2.5, PM4.0, PM10 ranges (compact). When integrated into a variety of systems, the HPM Series can help alert occupants to the presence of airborne particulates and trigger supporting equipment to improve indoor air quality

 

What size particles does the HPM Series detect?

The HPM Series can detect particulates from 0.3 µm to 5 µm in size. The sensor uses the particle count data to provide a PM2.5 reading and calculated PM1.0, PM4.0, and PM10 readings.

 

What particle distributions are the HPM Series calibrated against?

The HPM Series is calibrated to cigarette smoke, which most closely correlates to burnt fossil fuels or smog. The sensor can be calibrated to other particle distributions upon request.

 

Where can the HPM Series be integrated?

The HPM Series features a compact design, allowing it to be seamlessly integrated into a variety of applications such as traditional HVAC controls, indoor air monitors, air purification equipment, automotive cabin filtration, and commercial kitchen ventilation.

 

How accurate is the HPM Series?

Engineered for excellent accuracy, the HPM Series is able to detect particulate densities to within ±15% accuracy (PM2.5). Some competitive devices offer accuracy of ±30% or worse.

 

How fast does the HPM Series analyze media and respond?

Ultra-fast, the HPM Series analyzes media in less than six seconds. This speed allows the HPM Series to quickly analyze and provide data to supporting equipment, allowing the device to respond to changing conditions in real-time.

 

Volcanoes Create Additional Needs for Air Filters and Masks

Beginning on the morning of 21 December 2020, Mt. Kilauea in Hawaii, USA and Mt. Etna in Sicily, Italy, two of the world’s most active volcanoes, were erupting explosive plumes of lava and ash at the same time in a seeming geological coincidence. This has resulted in a large-scale air quality impact for thousands of miles beyond the eruptions themselves. 

Around 9:30 PM local time on 20 December 2020, Mt. Kilauea began to erupt and spew ash into the air for hundreds of miles around the U.S. state of Hawaii and caused a 4.4-magnitude earthquake. Authorities on the island urged residents of the island to stay inside to avoid the toxic impact of ash blown from the eruption into the surrounding regions. 

In the hours following the 20 December eruption, the air quality index (AQI) in communities like Pahala, Naalehu, and Ocean View appeared to rise gradually following the initial eruption, with the Kahuku Cross Fence station on the Ko’olau Summit Trail recording AQI measurements well into the 100s (“unhealthy for sensitive groups”) by the middle of the day.

The air quality impact of Kilauea may not seem immense at first glance. But over time, Kilauea’s eruptions have been linked to dangerously high levels of PM2.5 – in a 2020 study, researchers found that PM2.5 levels rose as high as 300 μg/m3 (350 AQI) during a previous eruption in 2018, and this eruption is expected to have similar results.
  

Mt. Etna, on the other hand, has already been erupting for over a week (since 14 December 2020) leading up to the Kilauea eruption. But on the morning of 21 December, volcanologists recorded Mt. Etna as showing “strong explosive activity,” with huge amounts of ash and lava bursting out of the volcano during violent periods called “paroxysms.”
 

Volcano smoke and its associated pollutants can impact human health as far as thousands of miles from its source.

Common volcanic smoke pollutants include: 

·         carbon dioxide 

·         sulfur dioxide 

·         carbon monoxide 

·         hydrogen sulfide 

·         carbon disulfide 

·         hydrogen chloride 

·         methane 

·         hydrogen fluoride 

·         hydrogen bromide 

·         heavy metals such as mercury, lead, and gold