Coronavirus
Technology Solutions
Big Run On HVAC Filters
Using Filtration, Ventilation and Differential
Pressure to Slow the Spread of Covid-19
Both Air Pollutants and Virus in Indian Air will
Penetrate Inefficient or Loose Masks
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Big Run On HVAC Filters
Jim Rosenthal, CEO of Tex-Air Filters says that
his company is overwhelmed with orders. Sales
are up 15% but they could be much higher if he
could increase production. There is now a one
month backlog.
Rosenthal who was president of the
National Air Filtration Association is pursuing
industrial, business, and school applications.
Those arguing for greater filtration use in HVAC
includes Kimberly Prather, a professor at UCSD
who sees this filtration to be a key part of a
layered defense that includes mask wearing.
McIlvaine has been conducting interviews
on droplet evaporation with the UCSD. The fact
that large droplets are only temporarily
retained on mask, surface, or filter media
before splitting into small aerosols puts more
burden on efficient masks and filters.
Jeff Siegel at the University of Toronto says we
have been overlooking
HVAC for a long time and are now paying
the consequences.
How well does the negative pressure work in a
house to control particles? I have experience
with that. My home was built in 1965. We have
been remodeling virtually every room – one room
at a time for the last 5 to 6 years. I know
about negative pressure. So I tell every
contractor that they must put up plastic
sheeting sealing off their work area. Then I
tell them to place a fan in a window somewhere
in this area – blowing out. The result? All of
the construction dust from cutting sheetrock,
sanding surfaces, sawing wood, etc. is confined
in the work space. None of this dust goes into
the rest of the house.
The same would happen with airborne Covid-19
particles. Seal the area and then push air to
the outside. Negatively pressurize the space.
The particles will either stay in the enclosed
space or be pulled into the filter. Most
importantly, they will not invade the rest of
the house and expose the other residents to
Covid-19.
But there is another consideration –
ventilation. Nature loves to have equilibrium.
For every force, there is a counter force. So
when you put that fan in the window to create
the negative pressure in the room of the
Covid-19 patient, the air in the balance of the
indoor environment will seek to enter that room.
It comes under and around the door, through
windows, between cracks, and around or through
anything used to create the “seal.” The
ventilation air is needed and will not stop the
effectiveness of the “isolation room” as long as
the negative pressure in the room exceeds the
pressure outside of the room.
One needs to measure the balance between the two
spaces. That is pretty easy to do with a strip
of tissue. Hold it up by an opening (around the
door for example) going into the negatively
pressurized room. The paper should go towards
the “isolation room.” Any particles containing
Covid-19 will either stay in the room or be
pulled outside by the fan in the window.
It helps to open a window or windows to supply
ventilation air. That ventilation air will help
to dilute any other airborne potentially
contagious particles, reduce CO2 levels and
provide for a safer indoor environment.
This same concept of containing Covid-19 should
be applied in other areas. Nursing homes,
college dorms, apartments, office buildings, and
any other space where it is possible to seal,
remove viral particles and create negative
pressure should adopt this procedure as soon as
possible. It is a proven, effective way to limit
exposure to Covid-19 – even for people who live
or work in an indoor environment where someone
has the disease and is contagious.
ProGuard Filters Combine Chemical and Particle
Filtration
All HVAC systems have some means of filtering
the air that they cool, heat, and recycle.
Mostly, these filters are designed to trap
particulates and prevent the spread of dust and
pollens. To mitigate the spread of pathogens,
additional filter technology is required.
ProGuard® HVAC Filters from ProMark
Associates,
are a quick and affordable way for building
owners and facility managers to improve indoor
air quality. In most cases, there is a ProGuard
Filter that is sized to be a direct replacement
for filters currently in use. For each size,
there are also different technologies available,
to respond to a particular situation.
The PMA 90 replaces standard 5-inch-deep final
filters. It has twice the media content of
competitors’ filters, and half the resistance.
It is a true 95 percent filter, MERV 14, that
provides higher performance, lower pressure
drops, and longer life at a competitive price.
PMA90 is bidirectional, with safety-guard
screening on both up and downstream facing
areas. Both sizes have a single 1-inch header
with gasket for better sealing to prevent bypass
of particles. Dimensions (Nominal): PMA
90.4 – 24″ h x 24″ w x 5″ d PMA
90.2 – 12″ h x 24″ w x 5″ d.
As a thick quilt of smog wrapped itself around
New Delhi on Thursday, signaling the start of
the fall
pollution season, doctors and scientists
warned that the deteriorating air quality could
make the city’s Covid-19 problems
even worse.
One of the most common symptoms of severe
coronavirus cases is breathing difficulty. And
doctors say that if the ambient air suddenly
becomes more toxic, as it does every year around
this time in northern India, then more people
who become infected by the virus might end up in
the hospital or die.
“If two people are shooting at the lungs, then
obviously the lungs will have more problems,”
said Arvind Kumar, a chest surgeon and founder
of the Lung
Care Foundation in New Delhi, a group
that raises awareness about respiratory
problems.
India is now struggling with two major health
challenges that are both assaulting the
respiratory system and peaking at the same time.
A temporary coronavirus test center at a New
Delhi school last month.
Credit...Prakash
Singh/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
In the background is India’s vexing air
pollution, which shoots up in the fall and
winter. The rapid economic growth of the past
two decades — and along with it, increased
urbanization and congestion — has left Indian
cities horribly polluted.
Last year, India
was once again home to 14 of the 20 cities with
the most hazardous air globally, and
health experts have detailed how such conditions
can lead to brain
damage, respiratory problems and early
death.
In the fall, air temperatures and wind speeds
drop, condensing pollutants over India’s cities,
especially in the north. And farmers in the
surrounding rural areas burn the stalks and
refuse from their crop, sending up huge clouds
of black smoke that drift for miles.
Burning crop stubble on the outskirts of
Amritsar on Tuesday.
Credit...Raminder
Pal Singh/EPA, via Shutterstock
This year there have been five
times the number of farm refuse fires in
northern India as the same period last year,
and experts say it is a bad sign of what’s to
come.
The agricultural sector has been a rare bright
spot in an Indian
economy that has been shattered by the pandemic,
and pollution experts fear that more farming
will mean more burning.
“My gut is it’s going to be a bumper, bumper
harvest and a bumper, bumper combustion event,
probably the biggest of our lifetime,” said Jai
Dhar Gupta, an Ivy League-educated environmental
activist and entrepreneur.
“And now that you’ve got the combined impact of
a respiratory virus and respiratory
contaminants, every public health specialist is
holding their breath to see what happens,” Mr.
Gupta said.
“We’re just sitting ducks,” he added.
Doctors worry that as the air grows toxic,
people with the coronavirus are more likely to
become severely sick or die.
Doctors say long-term exposure to severely
polluted air can cause chronic lung
inflammation, which can leave people who are
exposed to the coronavirus more vulnerable. A
recent study from Italy found
a correlation between long-term exposure to
dirty air and an increase in excess mortality —
a measure of deaths above normal — from the
coronavirus.
“Pollution-afflicted areas will have a higher
incidence of Covid,” said Dr. Kumar, the chest
surgeon. “And once this population gets Covid,
they then have a higher chance of mortality.”
Up until now, people in New Delhi this year had
been spoiled in terms of breathable air. When a
coronavirus lockdown in the spring shut down
many industries and kept cars off the road, Delhi’s
skies turned a miraculous blue. It was
the cleanest air in decades, and at night,
residents felt as if they were being treated to
a star show. Constellations that hadn’t been
seen for years shone above the apartment blocks.
But that has become a dim memory. The sky is
back to its usual hazy brown, and the city now
smells of smoke.
The Delhi government is doing more this year to
fight pollution, including setting up a
war room to track pollution hot spots and
turning to anti-smog guns that blast mist into
the air to knock down the dust.
A worker operating an anti-smog gun at a
construction site in New Delhi on Wednesday.
Credit...Adnan
Abidi/Reuters
On Thursday, officials in Delhi, which is
controlled by a progressive opposition political
party, got locked into a blame game with
national politicians who are part of the
right-leaning administration of Prime Minister
Narendra Modi.
The Delhi officials blamed the Modi government
for not doing enough to stop crop burning in the
states that ring the capital. Modi
administration officials argued that crop
burning contributed only a minuscule amount to
overall air pollution, and they blamed the Delhi
government for not doing enough to control dust.
Many more people in India’s cities are donning
masks these days because of the pandemic, but
experts say this probably won’t help much.
Most people wear cloth masks or surgical-type
masks that don’t seal well and won’t stop
someone from inhaling small pollution particles
(or the virus, either).
McIlvaine believes that
this is the critical revelation. You need high
efficiency masks.
Pollution alerts whizzed around the city via
WhatsApp messages on Thursday.
“Delhi pollution level reported hazardous. 335,”
read one message, referring to an Air Quality
Index reading of 335, about six times as bad as
that of New York City.
The message continued: “Be Careful. Seniors
don’t go out. Wear mask.”
But points out
McIlvaine it has to be efficient and tight
fitting because both virus and air pollution
particles are in the same size range as perfume
and cigarette smoke.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/15/world/asia/india-covid-pollution.html
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