covid-19

Opinion: Why Haven’t We Made It Safer to Breathe in Classrooms?

Two years ago, we got a chance to assure parents and teachers, in any future epidemic, that the air in classrooms was safer, making it easier for children to attend school in person and avoid learning loss and isolation.

In March 2021, Congress allocated $122 billion for schools to cope with the Covid pandemic and its aftermath — to hire tutors, retain teachers or improve their facilities. Public health and clean air advocates hoped that this would lead to widespread improvements in classroom ventilation and air quality to help ward off future pathogenic threats and reduce problems like dust, allergens and wildfire smoke.

But only about 34 percent of school districts said they used any of the money to upgrade their heating ventilation and air-conditioning systems, according to a recent survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 28 percent more installed in-room air cleaners, 8 percent said they installed ultraviolet lights — a more expensive and complicated method — and the rest reported no changes that would substantially improve air quality.

Read More @ The New York Times

By Zeynep Tufekci, Opinion Columnist at the New York Times

EPA Testing DIY Air Purifier Built by Fifth Graders

After wildfire smoke and the COVID-19 pandemic caused a surge in demand for air purifiers, which can be expensive or out-of-stock, the “Corsi-Rosenthal” box was born.

The simple, inexpensive device is crafted from a box fan, MERV-13 air filters, and duct tape.

Ten-year-old Eniola Shokunbi, who lives in Middletown, Connecticut, had the idea to make the box with her classmates and conduct an experiment to see if better air quality improved student attendance. She reached out to researchers at the University of Connecticut, proposing a collaboration.

“She hand-wrote me a letter and I was so impressed,” said Marina Creed, the university’s Indoor Air Quality Initiative director and an adjunct instructor at the UConn’s School of Medicine.

The students decorated the box and dubbed it “Owl Force One.”

Read More @ WRAL.com

DIY Air Filtration Systems Help Clear The Air in Connecticut Public Schools

Governor Lamont PhotoGov. Ned Lamont announced last week that his administration will release $150 million to help upgrade heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems in Connecticut public schools to improve air filtration.

But medical staff and scientific researchers working on the University of Connecticut’s Indoor Air Quality Initiative say schools can improve the quality of their air with a $64 purchase at their local hardware store.

The program – led by Marina Creed, a nurse practitioner at the UConn Health Comprehensive MS Center – has already provided 200 so-called ‘Corsi-Rosenthal boxes’ to Coventry public schools, 100 to elementary school cafeterias in West Hartford, 10 at the Hartford Public Library and more at the South Park Inn Shelter in Hartford.

Read More @ CT News Junkie

White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy Recognizes UConn’s Indoor Air Quality Initiative Fighting COVID-19

Story originally published on UConn Today

Office of Science and Technology Policy group photo with air purifier

UConn Health nurse practitioner Marina Creed’s University of Connecticut cross-campus do-it-yourself indoor air purifier project continues to gain momentum — all the way to the White House.

Creed’s patients in UConn Health’s Multiple Sclerosis Center are among the more vulnerable to severe illness from COVID-19. Motivated by her role as both a clinician and a parent, last year she initiated a cross-campus public health initiative to get what are known as “Corsi-Rosenthal Boxes” into public school classrooms.

The boxes are an uncomplicated combination of easily obtained supplies that can be assembled in minutes. The components — a box fan, pleated air filter panels, cardboard and duct tape — add up to less than it costs to travel to Washington, D.C., where Creed presented members of the Biden administration’s Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) a DIY air purifier by the UConn team and Hartford school children.

On September 9 she and UConn School of Engineering’s Associate Professor in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Kristina Wagstrom visited a fifth-grade science class at Hartford’s Noah Webster Microsociety Magnet School, where they presented a STEM lesson that included the assembly of two DIY purifiers.

One, decorated in the school’s color, red, stayed in the classroom; the other, decorated as “Air Force One” and signed by the class, would be on its way to the White House the next day.

“It was an incredible opportunity for our team to showcase this important intervention made by Hartford public school students to the Office of Science and Technology Policy and gift ‘Air Force One’ to the team within the executive office of the president,” Creed says. “It was wonderful to see the children’s STEM lesson come to life. The unit is inside the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, and we hope it will make its way into the West Wing for the president and first lady to appreciate.”

The DIY air filtration kits have been shown to be comparable to manufactured portable HEPA filters.

“It was great to see how excited the students were to work on something that would have real impact,” Wagstrom says.

Creed says their UConn team’s research includes using state-of-the-art cloud-based air quality monitoring sensors to capture critical data showing the intervention’s effectiveness in improving indoor air quality in real-world settings. The sensors, called MODULAIR-PM, are provided by Quant-AQ, an air quality startup in Somerville, Massachusetts.

“The evidence is clear – clean indoor air keeps students healthier and happier. We are excited to learn more about how these students put this evidence into action to benefit their community,” said Dr. Erica Kimmerling, Senior Advisor for Public Engagement at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. “The ‘Air Force One’ air filter will not only help provide clean air to the staff at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy but it will be a great conversation starter to help spread the word about the ways people can improve indoor air quality.”

Creed was honored to be gifting the device to the White House OSTP alongside a major advocate of the DIY Corsi-Rosenthal intervention, Kimberly Prather, Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry at University of California San Diego (UCSD) and the Scripps Institute of Oceanography. Members of President Biden’s OSTP accepting the gift were Kimmerling, Dr. Georgia Lagoudas, senior advisor for biotechnology and biodefense, and Dr. Stephanie Guerra, assistant director for national security and biodefense.

In the spring, the Office of Science and Technology Policy held a webinar titled “Clear the Air of COVID-19.” Creed emailed the office to explain her indoor air filtration project, and in reply received an invitation to give a 30-minute briefing. As a capstone to the briefing, Creed, whose hometown is Washington, D.C., offered to bring a box made in the community by school children. The response to that was an invitation for a formal delivery to the White House.

“I was humbled that our work is being noticed at the federal level, and I am eager that our project will result in widespread improvements in public health through low-technology, low-cost, energy-efficient STEM projects that fifth grade school children can do,” Creed says. “It was heartwarming to know that a private citizen like myself can take an idea inspired by direct patient care and continue to push for the fruition of the vision that I have had, which is that these should be in every classroom in the state of Connecticut, if not throughout the country. It felt great to know that there’s federal support behind this initiative that we are working on.”

Support isn’t only coming from the federal government. In August the UConn Foundation announced a $300,000 grant funded through cryptocurrency from Balvi, an investment and direct giving fund established by Vitalik Buterin, the co-creator of Ethereum, to back the Indoor Air Quality Initiative. In May, Creed was recognized with one of UConn’s 2022 Provost’s Awards for Excellence in Community Engaged Scholarship.

The filtration systems are named for their creators, Richard Corsi, dean of engineering at the University of California-Davis, and Jim Rosenthal, CEO of Texas-based company Tex-Air Filters. Since last year Creed has been working to get them into Connecticut schools, and to teach students how to make them as part of a science and health lesson.

The students who helped create ‘Air Force One’ at the Webster Magnet School were impressed.

“We made an air filter that can help take away the germs and bacteria, and it’s really useful because a lot of kids got COVID now and earlier in the year,” says Elijah Ruiz, 10, of New Britain.

“It’s really cool that you can just get a few items that only cost a couple of dollars and make something that can make such a difference,” says Mia Lee, 10, of Manchester.

“It’s something that could be life-changing for everybody, and it can cure a lot of diseases, like COVID,” says Nayeli Rockwell, 10, of East Hartford.

What about the idea that something they helped make and put their names on would be going to the White House?

“Out of this world,” Nayeli says.

“That’s crazy,” Elijah says.

“It’s really, really cool, because Joe Biden is our president,” Mia says.

The Indoor Air Quality Initiative’s UConn cross-campus collaborators include: UConn Health and its Comprehensive Multiple Sclerosis Center, UConn School of Medicine and its Department of Public Health Sciences, UConn School of Engineering, UConn School of Nursing, Connecticut Area Health Education Center Network (CT AHEC), and the UConn Neag School of Education.

This DIY box helps clear indoor air of the coronavirus. Why aren’t more people using them?

air purifier with stay in school message

The glowing box, pulsing with rainbowy light, looks as if it was dropped into this Studio City living room from a warehouse rave.

It came, in fact, from the garage where Alex LeVine has been tinkering with fans, filters and tape, trying to bring a bit of fun to a simple tool to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The mesmerizing device uses fans and filters to pull contaminants — including smoke, dog dander and the unwelcome coronavirus — out of indoor air.

It can also flash in time to the sounds of Phil Collins. “In the Air Tonight,” of course.

“People aren’t embracing any of the other things that can avert disaster in this pandemic,” said LeVine, a 49-year-old cannabis company executive with an electrical engineering degree who started building trippy do-it-yourself filtration boxes as a hobby. “Maybe I can create a way to clean the air that people want in the middle of the room.”

Read Me @ The LA Times

UConn Health Rallying Community to Stop Spread of COVID-19

COVID-19 transmits more easily in overcrowded and poorly ventilated places. To address this, UConn Health has united the UConn community to kick off an Indoor Air Quality Initiative, building inexpensive do-it-yourself air purifiers as part of a pilot project to improve community health in local elementary schools, homeless shelters, and beyond.

The new initiative, organized by UConn Health and its Comprehensive Multiple Sclerosis Center, with the UConn School of Nursing, School of Engineering, School of Medicine, the Department of Public Health Sciences, and Connecticut Area Health Education Center Network, believes that a multi-pronged approach to mitigate the risk of COVID-19 can involve the community—and that accessible, inexpensive DIY portable indoor air cleaners are one effective way to do it.

Among other strategies, the initiative is building and distributing the “Corsi-Rosenthal Box” to help stop the spread of COVID-19 and other viruses such as influenza. The boxes remove 90% of virus-carrying aerosols from the air, and are also effective against dust and allergens. With just about 30 minutes of an assembler’s time and $60 worth of supplies including a box fan, high-quality air filters, cardboard and duct tape, these devices drastically reduce COVID-carrying aerosols, providing comparable filtration capabilities to expensive professionally manufactured portable HEPA filters.

three people holding air purifiers

“Cleaner air will protect educators, students, and families. This DIY portable air cleaner is a low-cost, evidence-based intervention that immediately improves indoor air quality,” says UConn Health MS Center Nurse Practitioner Marina A. Creed, who spearheaded the initiative with the help of friend and colleague Sarah Laskowski of The Jackson Laboratory. Creed is concerned about her patients who are educators, paraprofessionals and parents, and both she and Laskowski have children in public schools. “My hope is that we can help make schools one of the safest places in the community, and by extension, better protect my patients, many of whom are immunocompromised.”

UConn’s School of Nursing and the School of Engineering are currently testing Corsi-Rosenthal Boxes in real world settings, looking at the effectiveness at removing particulate matter from the air in a classroom in Storrs Hall.

After contacting several school districts for the first 100-unit pilot program, West Hartford Public Schools volunteered to deploy these units to their cafeterias, where students eat lunch unmasked. The next 100-units in the pilot program will be built by 500 undergraduate engineering students as part of their ENG1166 class and will be deployed to Coventry Public Schools, where they will be utilized in cafeterias, classrooms, and other public spaces throughout the district. Additional box-a-thons are being planned for early 2022. The boxes, which use about the same amount of electricity as a single lightbulb, could be an affordable intervention to improve school air quality in almost any space in any school.

“This is a nurse-led initiative that came from the point of patient care,” says UConn School of Nursing Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Angela Starkweather. “This is about the whole connection we have with the community. An infection could from the patient setting to the community, and vice versa. You want to protect your patients,” and mitigating that risk using these inexpensive air filters protects children, vulnerable patients, and the broader community, Starkweather says.

The team is working on a website expected to go live in January that will enable any school or institution in Connecticut to build their own air filtration boxes.

“This is interventional public health in action,” says Dr. Jaime Imitola, Director of the UConn Health MS Center. “It is impressive what the UConn Community can do and rally toward a worthy cause.”

UConn Officials Make Indoor Air Cleaners to Stop Spread of Covid-19 in Classrooms

three people holding air purifiers

Health officials at the University of Connecticut made indoor air cleaners in an effort to stop the spread of Covid-19 in classrooms.

With just a box fan, high-quality air filters, cardboard and duct tape, they assembled 100 boxes which will go in cafeterias in West Hartford schools.

Read More @ NBC Connecticut