Tag: ventilation

The Air We Breathe

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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Between heat and wildfire smoke, many people have been driven indoors this summer. Heat is one of the most dangerous conditions; more people die from heat waves than tornadoes and other disasters that make more news.

And the wildfire smoke has pushed the air quality index off the charts in a lot of places that aren’t used to such things. Not that anyone can get used to those levels; human lungs aren’t that good.

So people stay inside, with windows closed and air conditioners cranked up, and hope the power doesn’t go out.

The thing is, indoor air can also be bad for us, if not as immediately bad as heat or as obviously bad as smoke. The pandemic made clear that many viruses are airborne – something that should have been clear to all of us decades ago – so that breathing in places with poor ventilation means diseases spread quickly.

Lots of indoor spaces have lousy ventilation. Even fewer of them have good filtration systems that screen out viruses and particulate matter.

Fires and heat waves have always been with us, though now they are much worse due to climate change and likely to continue getting worse. We are going to have to deal with them for some time to come, likely centuries even if we actually start doing things to repair the damage done to our atmosphere.

Fortunately, we can easily do quite a lot about indoor air quality, and, in fact, engineers have been working on that for quite some time. Our biggest problem is not the technology – it exists and isn’t even particularly expensive – but, as with most of the issues we face right now, the political will to get it done.

Back in 2021, ASHRAE (the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers) was asked by President Biden to address the issues caused by virus spread indoors. This week I listened to an introductory webinar on the standard conducted by a professor of engineering from Penn State who worked on it.

In four months – incredibly fast for an organization devoted to meticulous study of issues that often takes years to develop standards – they came up with Standard 241 on control of infectious aerosols. The standard addresses such things as amount of ventilation required to reduce the risk as well as filtration devices and other methods of limiting or destroying the viruses.

The original standard was recommended only, since it had not had the usual level of review, but now it is up for certification as an ANSI standard, which means that it can more easily be adopted into building codes and related regulation.

Standard 241 is obviously related to overall indoor air quality, but has been published separately from other ASHRAE standards that govern that. The intent, I think, is to allow those maintaining building systems to ramp up for epidemic conditions, rather than include such standards at all times. I gathered from the webinar that not everyone agrees with keeping them separate.

Given how many viruses are airborne, I think protection against airborne diseases should always be part of the indoor air quality system. While Covid was obvious and devastating, flu happens every year and other respiratory viruses spread regularly.

It seems to me that setting up buildings to minimize spread of disease as well as blocking toxic chemicals and particulate matter leads to healthier indoor spaces for everyone. Continue reading “The Air We Breathe”…

Avoiding Viruses

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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I was at a meeting here in Oakland the other day, one of those wonderful meetings about projects we have around here. There was food – good food, too, not just the usual pizza – and people who had critical things to say were careful in their phrasing.

(As a person who has developed a hatred of meetings after a lifetime of going to them, I am often pleasantly surprised by how good our meetings are in Oakland.)

But there was one thing: I had brought a CO2 meter, because I knew we would be meeting in a basement room, and over the course of the meeting it began to register not just high, but seriously high. I put on a mask, but finally decided to say something.

People were a little surprised, but we opened another door, and the reading dropped back into the good range.

And I realized that very few people are truly aware of the need for indoor air quality, even activists, and even people who are careful to mask in larger gatherings or on airplanes.

Now I’m not measuring CO2 for its own sake – though the higher the CO2 level in a room, the more it makes you drowsy and slows down your brain processing during the time you’re in that space – but as a proxy for the risk of getting Covid or another respiratory virus.

Those viruses are spread in the air, so if you’re sick and exhale – or cough or sneeze – you put the virus into the air. When CO2 levels get above 800, we’re breathing in each other’s lung exhalations, so if one person is sick, we’re all going to be exposed.

There are things you can do about this.

The simplest one is to put more air in the room – open a window or a door, if they are available in that space.

It is possible to put in a heating and air conditioning system that includes good ventilation and also has a filtration system that takes viruses and other particles out of the air. It’s not particularly new technology and if you’re putting in an overall system, it’s not all that expensive.

But it is a lot more expensive than doing nothing, so very few places have done it as a retrofit.

So opening the windows or doors is still the default most places.

There is something cheap and practical you can do in buildings that aren’t being retrofitted and don’t have much access to outside air: you can get an air filter. In fact, if money is a real issue, you can build one cheaply using a box fan and MERV 13 filters. Continue reading “Avoiding Viruses”…

WorldCon and “Con Crud”

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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WorldCon this year was great for me, despite being so huge that I never even saw many folks who I know were there. I did run into lots of other folks, had some good conversations, and heard some good panels.

The best thing I did was con-adjacent: Charlie Jane Anders put on a special Writers With Drinks before 700 people in Seattle’s Town Hall with Andrea Hairston, Annalee Newitz, Darcie Little Badger, Becky Chambers, and Cecilia Tan.

Not only were the readings great – no surprise with that line up – but the audience was fabulous and enthusiastic. I felt at home in a crowd for the first time in a long time.

I came away from the whole weekend inspired about getting on with my own writing and extremely aware of how important it is for people to get together in groups. And while smaller, local meetups are certainly good, large gatherings that don’t happen as often are also key.

People have been getting together in these ways for a very long time. It’s part of who we are as a species.

But of course, things being as they are, the aftermath of WorldCon was accompanied by posts on social media and notices from the convention about Covid and other contagious viruses among the attendees.

“Con crud” has always been a thing among those who spend time at science fiction conventions. And while I recall all too well the norovirus that went around WisCon one year, most con crud comes from contagious airborne viruses like colds and flu.

I saw one post that said these days people call Covid “spicy con crud.” It makes it sound like a joke. And really, we’ve always treated con crud as a joke.

Except it isn’t funny. The risks from Covid make things much worse, but the truth is we shouldn’t be so cavalier about other kinds of viruses. Far too many of them cause things similar to Long Covid, and of course, some people are at greater risk from respiratory viruses than others.

But somehow, despite the fact that we learned (or should have learned) from the Covid pandemic that there are a number of things as a society that we can do to stop the spread of contagious airborne disease, we are still running our society on the idea that everyone is just going to get these viruses and that’s OK.

It’s not OK. We should not accept getting sick – especially with the risk of ending up with major diseases later – as the price of getting together as a social species. Continue reading “WorldCon and “Con Crud””…

Fixing the Air We Breathe Indoors

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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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”…

Getting Sick

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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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”…