infection prevention

Classroom Air Cleaners?

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Schools of all sorts are looking for ways to re-open while minimizing coronavirus transmission risks. Harvard University’s School of Public Health recently issued a downloadable document on “Schools for Health”. In it they suggest a number of administrative and engineering approaches for reducing virus transmission in a classroom and school setting. It’s interesting and worth a look.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Since I teach and do research in some aspects of HVAC (Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning) and indoor air quality, those parts of the report caught my attention. They are suggesting that people consider using portable air cleaners in the classroom, especially in situations where the HVAC is non-existent or poor. They don’t give a lot of numerical detail behind that recommendation, but it’s fairly easy to work it out. So I’ve done some quick calculations to see where air cleaners might be useful from a more quantitative perspective.

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Do Face Masks Work?

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“Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” (the more things change, the more they continue to be the same thing, attributed to Jean-Baptiste Karr).

Introduction to an article from the Journal of the American Medical Association, January 12, 1918

In our current pandemic situation there has been lots of confusion, uncertainty and general ignorance on the subject of face masks and reduction of disease transmission. In the screen capture I show the introductory paragraphs of an article published over one century ago, just as the so-called “Spanish Flu” H1N1 pandemic was probably starting but not yet recognized.

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Handwashing

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With the recent development of a viral pandemic, people are being reminded about the importance of handwashing for infection prevention. Coincidentally, in 2019 my colleague Prof. Marc Aucoin and I supervised a research study on handwashing for the CSA Group, a product standards organization. Specifically, our study aimed to determine if the faucet water flow rate had a significant effect on the ability of handwashing to remove bacteria from the skin.

You can access and read the full report on their website. The bottom line is that no, the water flow rate from the faucet didn’t have a significant effect over the range we tested, from 0.5 to 2.2 gallons per minute (about 2 to 8 litres per minute). Under all of those flow rates, on average about 99.3% of E. coli bacteria would be removed from the hands, which is good to know.

To do this study, we had to control all the other variables as much as possible, including the water temperature, and the amount and type of hand soap used by each person. The other big factor is the way that the hands were washed, including the length of time. For this study, we used a certain protocol from Public Health, and everyone involved in the study learned how to properly wash their hands. This was a good learning opportunity for people, including me, and so I reproduce the protocol that we used below. It’s a useful skill to know how to thoroughly wash your hands these days.

Recommended handwashing technique for infection prevention.