ventilation – Treehouse Writers

On May 15, ASHRAE — the association of engineers who work in heating, air conditioning, and ventilation — set out its Proposed Standard 241P, Control of Infectious Aerosols.

They are soliciting comments on it until May 26 from the public. Links and instructions for comments can be found here.

This standard, which was put together over six months — lightning speed for ASHRAE, which often takes years to develop new standards due to its painstaking process — was built on years of work by the organization on indoor air quality and included some input from public health experts.

According to ASHRAE:

The standard will address long-range transmission of infectious aerosols and provides minimum requirements for:

Equivalent outdoor air (combined effect of ventilation, filtration, and air cleaning) for use during Infection Risk Mitigation Mode

Room air distribution to reduce risk

Characterization of filter and air cleaner effectiveness and safety

Commissioning, including development and implementation of a Building Readiness Plan

System operation in Infection Risk Mitigation Mode during periods of high risk

Maintenance tasks and their minimum frequency

Residences and health care facilities

ASHRAE issued some recommendations early in the pandemic that provided guidelines for the kind of filtration that should be used in buildings to minimize transmission of airborne viruses. Those guidelines, though very good, were based on ongoing work on indoor air quality and did not include the kind of comprehensive work they brought to this new standard.

These standards, once incorporated into building codes and other regulations for buildings, will be a major step forward in making sure that the indoor air is safe to breathe. In a world in which many people spend most of their time indoors, that is a crucial element of public health.

These standards will minimize the transmission of airborne diseases including, but not limited to, Covid. Continue reading “Fixing the Air We Breathe Indoors”…

I got sick a couple of weeks ago. Nothing very serious, as near as I can tell. Not Covid — the symptoms were wrong plus I tested just in case because if it was that, I wanted the antiviral.

Mostly my joints were aching and I felt off and blah, but then I checked my blood pressure one morning and not only was it up, but my resting pulse was way faster than usual.

That scared me enough to go see a doctor (and thankfully I could get in to see someone on Friday afternoon, not something I would ever count on). I recounted my various symptoms and while she offered to refer me to a specialist if I wanted one, in her opinion it wasn’t anything serious and would resolve on its own.

Now in truth, those are pretty much the words I always want to hear from a doctor, especially as I get older. The last thing in the world I want is for a doctor to think it sounds serious and send me for a bunch of tests that will probably just lead to more tests and maybe they’ll find something that isn’t even what I was worried about when I called the doctor.

I mean, I’m OK with medication if it’s clear what I need. But in truth, when I get scared enough to check with doctor, I am really hoping for “it’s nothing to worry about.”

I walk a thin line between “ignore it and it’ll go away” and “what if I miss something that will kill me if I don’t get treatment now?”

I was talking with a doctor friend over the weekend about my experience and she said that it was a tricky line for a doctor, too. You don’t want to dismiss a patient’s experience, but sometimes it does seem that there really isn’t anything that needs to be done.

Interesting from both points of view. There are, of course, many people whose health issues have been dismissed for years. That is another, important issue, but it isn’t mine. Most of the time I know my body well enough to know what kind of help I need — I’ve become a big fan of physical therapy — and I only get nervous when something new happens.

I wasn’t very sick, but I felt lousy for a week. While I often have 24-hour bugs, this is the first time in years when I’ve been sick for days.

It left me with this reaction: Why don’t more people want to avoid getting sick? Continue reading “Getting Sick”…