A few times recently, I’ve been asked what the little device sitting next to me on an airplane or on my table at a restaurant was. A fan? A speaker?
No, it’s a tiny little battery-operated air purifier. It’s not nearly powerful enough to filter all the air in my vicinity in any of these places, but it’s better than nothing—and nothing is exactly what’s been done to improve air quality in too many places. (Airplane air is filtered and rapidly exchanged while flying, but not necessarily during boarding as everyone crowds onto the plane.)
Air quality is one of the mitigations that has been most overlooked during the COVID-19 pandemic, which is an enormous missed opportunity. Increasing fresh air circulation or adding air filtration wouldn’t just fight COVID transmission, it would do the same for the flu and RSV, the other two prongs of the "tripledemic." Air filters can also help with asthma and allergies.
In other words, here’s a pretty simple thing to do to help with a series of common viruses and conditions, and yet it took until March 2022 for it to get any significant attention in White House efforts to combat the spread of COVID, and even this month it didn’t get a mention when President Joe Biden tweeted a five-point "Winter COVID-19 Preparedness Plan." On covid.gov, you have to scroll way down to find a mention of air ventilation.
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But in a building with good air exchange and filtration (and there are multiple ways to get that, including letting in fresh air from outside, having MERV-13 filters in the building HVAC system, and adding portable filters), it would be much less of a concern who was or wasn’t wearing a mask—though, to be clear, masking would remain a very good idea. In one study, “The addition of two HEPA air cleaners that met the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)–recommended clean air delivery rate (CADR) (5) reduced overall exposure to simulated exhaled aerosol particles by up to 65% without universal masking. Without the HEPA air cleaners, universal masking reduced the combined mean aerosol concentration by 72%. The combination of the two HEPA air cleaners and universal masking reduced overall exposure by up to 90%.” Masks are more effective, by those numbers, but if the air in a room is being effectively cleaned, you don’t have to worry as much about the person with their mask resting under their nose, or the person with the single layer of fabric, never mind all the people with no mask at all.
Another study run at a hospital COVID-19 ward found that with HEPA filtration, SARS-CoV-2 virus levels in the air were undetectable, and levels of other viruses, bacteria, and fungus were also reduced.
This works, and it should be a basic tactic with strong government leadership. Yet so many schools still don’t have adequate ventilation nearly three years into the pandemic. We’ve learned through the pandemic that many schools don’t have windows that open and that keeping classroom doors open is often banned in case of mass shooters, but in one survey of 420 schools, just 39% had upgraded their HVAC systems, and just 28% used portable air filters. The former is expensive and time-consuming, but the latter is relatively affordable (a homemade Corsi-Rosenthal box can cost well under $100 in materials) and there is federal money supposedly available for exactly that sort of improvement.
It’s not just schools, though. This should be on everyone’s list. Companies moving away from remote work could put HEPA filters in their office spaces and make it more likely that workers would be healthy enough to actually make it in to the office regularly. Restaurants could keep their staff and customers much safer by upgrading their air quality. It’s great that airplanes have excellent air exchange and filtration, but what about airports? So many businesses still have hand sanitizer prominently posted all over the place, which is fine—but I’d love for them to tell me what they had done about air quality.
So I bring my itty bitty air purifier with me to some places, like my rare indoor restaurant meal or when boarding a plane, hoping that having its small stream of filtered air near me will provide some benefit. But privatizing clean air is a terrible way to go and this should be a no-brainer, something everyone is hearing about all the time. The Biden administration has taken some steps toward emphasizing clean buildings, but when the administration’s plan calls for “Building public awareness around ventilation and filtration improvements to reduce disease spread in buildings” and then Biden’s holiday season preparedness tweet doesn’t mention the issue, there’s a disconnect, and one that’s failing the public and the public health.
No, it’s a tiny little battery-operated air purifier. It’s not nearly powerful enough to filter all the air in my vicinity in any of these places, but it’s better than nothing—and nothing is exactly what’s been done to improve air quality in too many places. (Airplane air is filtered and rapidly exchanged while flying, but not necessarily during boarding as everyone crowds onto the plane.)
Air quality is one of the mitigations that has been most overlooked during the COVID-19 pandemic, which is an enormous missed opportunity. Increasing fresh air circulation or adding air filtration wouldn’t just fight COVID transmission, it would do the same for the flu and RSV, the other two prongs of the "tripledemic." Air filters can also help with asthma and allergies.
In other words, here’s a pretty simple thing to do to help with a series of common viruses and conditions, and yet it took until March 2022 for it to get any significant attention in White House efforts to combat the spread of COVID, and even this month it didn’t get a mention when President Joe Biden tweeted a five-point "Winter COVID-19 Preparedness Plan." On covid.gov, you have to scroll way down to find a mention of air ventilation.
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But in a building with good air exchange and filtration (and there are multiple ways to get that, including letting in fresh air from outside, having MERV-13 filters in the building HVAC system, and adding portable filters), it would be much less of a concern who was or wasn’t wearing a mask—though, to be clear, masking would remain a very good idea. In one study, “The addition of two HEPA air cleaners that met the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)–recommended clean air delivery rate (CADR) (5) reduced overall exposure to simulated exhaled aerosol particles by up to 65% without universal masking. Without the HEPA air cleaners, universal masking reduced the combined mean aerosol concentration by 72%. The combination of the two HEPA air cleaners and universal masking reduced overall exposure by up to 90%.” Masks are more effective, by those numbers, but if the air in a room is being effectively cleaned, you don’t have to worry as much about the person with their mask resting under their nose, or the person with the single layer of fabric, never mind all the people with no mask at all.
Another study run at a hospital COVID-19 ward found that with HEPA filtration, SARS-CoV-2 virus levels in the air were undetectable, and levels of other viruses, bacteria, and fungus were also reduced.
This works, and it should be a basic tactic with strong government leadership. Yet so many schools still don’t have adequate ventilation nearly three years into the pandemic. We’ve learned through the pandemic that many schools don’t have windows that open and that keeping classroom doors open is often banned in case of mass shooters, but in one survey of 420 schools, just 39% had upgraded their HVAC systems, and just 28% used portable air filters. The former is expensive and time-consuming, but the latter is relatively affordable (a homemade Corsi-Rosenthal box can cost well under $100 in materials) and there is federal money supposedly available for exactly that sort of improvement.
It’s not just schools, though. This should be on everyone’s list. Companies moving away from remote work could put HEPA filters in their office spaces and make it more likely that workers would be healthy enough to actually make it in to the office regularly. Restaurants could keep their staff and customers much safer by upgrading their air quality. It’s great that airplanes have excellent air exchange and filtration, but what about airports? So many businesses still have hand sanitizer prominently posted all over the place, which is fine—but I’d love for them to tell me what they had done about air quality.
So I bring my itty bitty air purifier with me to some places, like my rare indoor restaurant meal or when boarding a plane, hoping that having its small stream of filtered air near me will provide some benefit. But privatizing clean air is a terrible way to go and this should be a no-brainer, something everyone is hearing about all the time. The Biden administration has taken some steps toward emphasizing clean buildings, but when the administration’s plan calls for “Building public awareness around ventilation and filtration improvements to reduce disease spread in buildings” and then Biden’s holiday season preparedness tweet doesn’t mention the issue, there’s a disconnect, and one that’s failing the public and the public health.