Was not happy to go my first in-person meeting in 3 years, but I went prepared. Brought my trusty Aranet CO2 monitor with me, an N95 mask and a plan. Read on for details ->
The day started off fine, but gradually the CO2 levels started increasing, indicating to me that the ventilation system was not doing well in clearing the air from the 30 or so unmasked people in the room. No one had visible symptoms, which was reassuring somewhat.
I used equation in this tweet: https://t.co/AH1O4UAEZH to estimate the room ventilation.
The room was empty for lunch break, where the CO2 went down from 850 to 620 in 1 hour. This gives roughly a calculation of 2 air changes an hour. Not great -> you want at least 6 air change an hour, a standard that many health care and @uoft uses for its buildings.
The room had 6 medium sized HEPA filters, which were either turned off or on the lowest setting. I quietly went around and set them on the medium setting. Checking the brand on the web, I found they had a Clean Air Delivery Rate (CADR) of 130 cubic feet per minute. The room was roughly 40 feet x 30 feet x 10 ft ceiling, so a volume of 12k cubic feet. The 6 HEPA filters provided 130 cu.ft/min x 6 filters x 60 minutes = 46.8k cubic feet of filtered air per hour, which when divided by the room volume of 12k cubic feet, gave me 4 additional air changes an hour, so up to 6 total, which is the magic number.
Ideally fresh or highly filtered air should be the standard in every indoor setting; the benefits in preventing respiratory infection of all types are huge. But until society comes around to doing so, this process is something you can do to make every office meeting just a little bit safer.
#airborne#sars2#covid19
Big news from #Danemark we read today.
"Danish 🇩🇰 panel of 20 experts says for the first time clearly that covid is airborne and we need to clean our indoor air."
Thanks to @katja_adolf#cleanairbrigade
1/C
https://t.co/YojyAkjOJX
This is BIG news! Danish 🇩🇰 panel of 20 experts says for the first time clearly that covid is airborne and we need to clean our indoor air. 👏
Well, scientists have been saying this for the last 2.5 years...
I also appreciate how that terminology gets turned around as a positive, like using #cleanairbrigade as a good heading to galvanize people to work towards getting better air filtration into schools & other places.
Pardon pour ce fil brouillon et décousu mais aujourd'hui je devais recevoir des soins dans un établissement de santé prévu depuis des semaines mais en y allant j'ai eu la mauvaise surprise de constater que le port du masque n'y etais plus obligatoire depuis hier et aucun ⤵️
@DailyJLee I agree clean air can't go alone, like vaccine can't either.
I think clean air has a lot of immediate potential.
Containment and clean air mix well together. For clean air it is good to isolate.
Clean air is also bigger than covid:
other virus, pollen, CO2, chems, radon etc...
@chantz_y Same here.
We felt a call with the name.
Been with clean air thoughts since 2020 with this covid pandemic.
#cleanair is an attitude that needs to emerge!
#cleanairbrigade.