‘House in Monte el Pardo’ by slow studio 

 

The passive ‘House in Monte el Pardo’ sits 30 kilometers from Madrid in a plot with scenic views and orientation. Slow Studio was commissioned to complete the project as a house that can be rented out throughout most of the year while still maintaining a private space for the owners. The plot’s sloping topography helped the Studio accommodate both needs by generating a two-story house with independent access from the outside to each level. Specifically, the residence holds two separate areas that can be converted into one big space for future needs. 

all images © Salva López

 

 

a two-story house fueled by daylight + natural ventilation 

 

Slow Studio (see more here) organized the access on the first floor via a walkway that breaks down the plot’s steep slope. As a result, this level can be completely independent of the ground floor, holding a living-dining room, kitchen, and a small study-bedroom connected to the exterior. 

 

As this is a compact house, the architects guaranteed good sunlight and ventilation in all rooms through the design of two courtyards. The south courtyard is key to ensuring proper natural ventilation without incurring energy losses. It is a double-height space with a glazed roof that can be opened or closed depending on the season.

 

 

When closed in winter, the glazing creates a greenhouse effect that preheats the natural air outside. In summer, the open roof carries out ventilation through a 30-meter-long tube running under the house and introduces air at a temperature of 20 ºC during the hottest days. Moreover, the longitudinal shape of ‘House in Monte el Pardo’ allows the north facade to generate cross ventilation on the upper floor and the north patio to ventilate the lower level.

Beside ventilation, the project also considers indoor air quality by avoiding finishing products (varnishes, glues, and paints) that contain toxic substances emitted in the form of volatile organic compounds.

 

bioclimatic construction systems 

 

the architects combined two construction systems to save costs and guarantee comfort according to spatial functions. The semi-buried ground floor is built out of concrete thermal inertia walls, and the first floor is raised with a semi-prefabricated and lightweight timber frame made of PEFC-certified pine wood.

The façade structure comprises a framework of laminated pine laths, protected on the outside by OSB panels and on the inside by glue-free gypsum fiber panels. The interior partitions are made with clay-coated cellulose panels, the floors with manual terracotta pieces, and the enclosures clad in wood. Finally, an 8,000-liter rainwater recovery tank is installed for cleaning and toilets to make the most use of water resources.

 

 

 

 

 

 

1/5

groud floor plan

first floor plan

south facade elevation

transversal section

axonometric view

project info:

 

name: House in Monte el Pardo

location: Monte el Pardo, Madrid, Spain
architecture: Slow Studio

 

designboom has received this project from our DIY submissions feature, where we welcome our readers to submit their own work for publication. see more project submissions from our readers here.

 

edited by: lea zeitoun | designboom

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Originally Appeared Here

By Amanda Sealy, CNN

Two-plus years into the Covid-19 pandemic, you probably know the basics of protection: vaccines, boosters, proper handwashing and masks. But one of the most powerful tools against the coronavirus is one that experts believe is just starting to get the attention it deserves: ventilation.

Respiratory backwash

“The challenge for organizations that improve air quality is that it’s invisible,” said Joseph Allen, director of the Healthy Buildings Program at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

It’s true: Other Covid tools are more tangible. But visualizing how the virus might behave in poorly ventilated spaces can help people better understand this mitigation measure.

Allen likens it to cigarette smoke. “If I’m smoking in the corner of a classroom and you have low ventilation/filtration, that room is going to fill up with smoke, and everyone is breathing that same air.”

Then apply that to the outdoors.

“I could be smoking a cigarette, you could be a couple of feet from me, depending which way the wind was blowing, you may not even know I’m smoking.”

If you’re indoors, you could be breathing in less fresh air than you think.

“Everybody in a room together is constantly breathing air that just came out of the lungs of other people in that room. And depending on the ventilation rate, it could be as much as 3% or 4% of the air you’re breathing just came out of the lungs of other people in that room,” Allen said.

He describes this as respiratory backwash.

“Normally, that’s not a problem, right? We do this all the time. We’re always exchanging our respiratory microbiomes with each other. But if someone’s sick and infectious … those aerosols can carry the virus. That’s a problem.”

It’s airborne

“We’ve known for decades how to keep people safe in buildings from infection, from airborne infectious diseases like this one,” Allen said.

From the beginning of the pandemic, Allen and other experts have waved red flags, saying that the way we were thinking about transmission of Covid-19 — surfaces, large respiratory droplets — was missing the point.

“Hand washing and social distancing are appropriate but, in our view, insufficient to provide protection from virus-carrying respiratory microdroplets released into the air by infected people. This problem is especially acute in indoor or enclosed environments, particularly those that are crowded and have inadequate ventilation,” hundreds of scientists stated in an open letter in July 2020.

Eventually, the World Health Organization and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention acknowledged what the experts had been saying all along: that Covid-19 could also spread by small aerosolized particles that can travel more than 6 feet.

The coronavirus itself is very small — about 0.1 microns — but that doesn’t affect how far it can travel.

“The size of the virus itself doesn’t matter because, as we say, the virus is never naked in air. In other words, the virus is always traveling in respiratory particles that develop in our lungs. And those are all different sizes,” Allen said.

Singing or coughing can emit particles as large as 100 microns (almost the width of a human hair), he said, but the virus tends to travel in smaller particles — between 1 and 5 microns.

The size of these particles affects not only how far it can travel but how deeply we can breathe it into our lungs, and how we should approach protecting ourselves from this virus.

“When you’re talking about an airborne disease, there’s the what’s right around you, you know, the sort of the people who you know can cough in your face, the 6 feet thing, and then there’s the broader indoor air, because indoor air is recirculated,” said Max Sherman, a leader on the Epidemic Task Force for the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers.

Dilute and clean

“Outdoors is safer than indoors” has become an accepted mantra with Covid-19. Allen points out that protecting ourselves indoors is where our focus should always be, even beyond the pandemic.

“We’re [an] indoors species. We spend 90% of our time indoors. The air we breathe indoors has a massive impact on our health, whether you think about infectious disease or anything else, but it just has escaped the public consciousness for a long time,” he said.

Making sure our indoor air is healthy is not that complicated, Sherman said. “You just want to reduce the number of particles that might be carrying Covid or any other nasty [virus].”

The way you do that is through ventilation and filtration.

Filtration — just like it sounds — is filtering or cleaning the air, removing the infected particles. But think of ventilation as diluting the air. You’re bringing more fresh air in to reduce the concentration of those particles.

Dilution is exactly why we haven’t seen superspreader events outdoors, Allen says.

“We have hardly any transmission outdoors. Why is that? Unlimited dilution, because you have unlimited ventilation. And so, even in crowded protests or outdoor sporting events like the Super Bowl, we just don’t see superspreading happening. But if we did, we’d have the signal be loud and clear. We just don’t see it. It’s all indoors in these underperforming, unhealthy spaces.”

Healthy spaces

Even before the advent of HVAC systems, ventilation was integrated into many building designs.

The 1901 Tenement Housing Act of New York required every tenement building — a building with multifamily households — to have ventilation, running water and gas light.

Builders added ventilation to many of these buildings with a shaft in the middle that runs from the roof to the ground, allowing more airflow.

“In the late 19th century, people are finally starting to understand how disease spreads. So airshafts and the accompanying ventilation were seen as a solution to the public health crises that were happening in tenement buildings,” said Katheryn Lloyd, director of programming at the Tenement Museum. “There were high cases of tuberculosis, diphtheria and other diseases that spread. Now we know that spread sort of through the air.”

Today, we’re facing the same challenge.

“Getting basic ventilation in your home is important, full stop,” Sherman said.

One of the easiest, cheapest ways to do that is to open your windows.

Open doors or windows at opposite ends of your home to create cross-ventilation, the Environmental Protection Agency advises. Opening the highest and lowest windows — especially if on different floors — of a home can also increase ventilation. Adding an indoor fan can take it even further.

“If a single fan is used, it should be facing (and blowing air) in the same direction the air is naturally moving. You can determine the direction the air is naturally moving by observing the movement of drapes or by holding a light fabric or dropping paper clippings and noting which direction they move,” the EPA says.

Just cracking a window can help a lot, Allen says: “Even propping a window open a couple inches to really facilitate higher air changes, especially if you do it in multiple places in the house, so you can create some pressure differentials.”

It’s important to note that if you have an HVAC system, it must be running to actually circulate or filter the air. The EPA says that these systems run less than 25% of the time during heating and cooling seasons.

“Most of the controls these days have a setting where you can run the fan on low all the time. And that’s usually the best thing to do because that makes sure you’re getting you’re pushing air through the filter all the time and mixing the air up in your in your home,” Sherman advised.

This could be something to keep in mind if you’re going to have visitors or if someone in the household is at higher risk for severe illness.

Choose the most efficient filter your HVAC system can handle, and make sure you routinely change the filters.

Filters have a minimum efficiency reporting value, or MERV, rating that indicates how well they capture small particles. The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers recommends using at least a MERV-13 filter, which it says is at least 85% efficient at capturing particles from 1 to 3 microns.

If that’s not an option, portable air filters can also work well, but the EPA says to use one that is made for the intended room size and meets at least one of these criteria:

• Designed as high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA)
• CADR rated
• Manufacturer says the device will remove most particles below 1 micron

Finding a safe space

When you walk into a space, there’s no good rule of thumb to look around and gauge how well-ventilated it might be, and that can be a challenge when people have been tasked with assessing their own risk.

Allen suggests starting with the basics: Make sure you’re up to date with vaccinations and aware of where Covid-19 numbers stand in your community.

But then it gets harder. Even the number of people in a space isn’t a giveaway of a higher-risk situation.

“The more people in there could be higher-risk because you’re more likely to have someone who’s infectious, but if the ventilation is good, it really doesn’t matter.”

Ventilation standards are based on “an amount of fresh air per person, plus the amount of fresh air per square foot,” Allen explained. “So if you have a good system, the more people that enter the room, the more ventilation is brought in to the room.”

One tool that can help you assess ventilation in a room is a CO2 monitor, something Allen wishes he saw more in public spaces. He likes to carry a portable one, which you can order online for between $100 and $200.

“If you see under 1,000 parts per million, generally, you’re hitting the ventilation targets that are the design standard. But remember, these are not health-based standards. So we want to see higher ventilation rates.”

Allen prefers to see CO2 at or under 800 parts per million. He also notes that just because a space has low CO2 levels, it might not be unsafe if filtration is high, like on an airplane.

A gamechanger for schools

Atlanta Public Schools Superintendent Lisa Herring says the installation of 5,000 air filtration units — enough for every classroom — in her school district is “a gamechanger.”

The district had begun upgrading HVAC systems in several schools even before the pandemic, but federal funding allowed it to add filtration units during a crucial time when masks have become optional.

“It gives a greater level of confidence for us as a system to know that our air filtration systems are in place,” Herring said.

School districts all over the country have been jumping at the opportunity for ventilation upgrades made possible by an influx of federal funding.

An analysis in February by FutureEd, a think tank at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy, found that public schools had earmarked $4.4 billion for HVAC projects, which could grow to almost $10 billion if trends continued.

New Hampshire’s Manchester School District is pouring almost $35 million into upgrading HVAC systems, and interim Superintendent Jennifer Gillis says federal funding is “absolutely key.”

“You think about a district of our size with all the competing demands and the need to be fiscally responsible, a $35 million project, that’s a large project to introduce to our budget. Having those funds available to us lets us do 19 projects — and 19 projects in a very short span of time.”

For Gillis, ventilation has been an important mitigation strategy and an unobtrusive way to keep people safe.

“It’s something that most in the building don’t think about, but it’s a very passive way for us to create safety within the schools. Since the beginning, the goal was always ‘let’s get our kids in, let’s get our staff in, but let’s do it in a way that’s safe for all of them.’ “

Good ventilation isn’t only about keeping students safe from Covid-19, Sherman says. It can also improve their performance in school.

“They’re going to learn better; they’re going to be awake more; they’re going to be more receptive. They’re going to be healthier if they’ve got good indoor air quality,” he said.

Finally front and center

Helping solidify ventilation’s role in the Covid-19 battle, the Biden administration announced a Clean Air in Buildings Challenge last month.

The challenge calls on building operators and owners to improve ventilation by following guidelines laid out by the EPA.

The main actions include creating a clean indoor air action plan, optimizing fresh air ventilation, enhancing air filtration and cleaning, and engaging the building community by communicating with occupants to increase awareness, commitment and participation.

The message may seem overdue, but it’s one that Allen enthusiastically welcomed.

“The White House used its pulpit to say unequivocally that clean air and buildings matter. That’s massive. Regardless of what you think about what will happen next with implementation or what happens with the funding. That is a crystal-clear message that is already being heard by businesses, nonprofits, universities and state leaders. I see these changes happening already.”

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.

[ad_2]

Originally Appeared Here

“The challenge for organizations that improve air quality is that it’s invisible,” said Joseph Allen, director of the Healthy Buildings Program at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

It’s true: Other Covid tools are more tangible. But visualizing how the virus might behave in poorly ventilated spaces can help people better understand this mitigation measure.

Allen likens it to cigarette smoke. “If I’m smoking in the corner of a classroom and you have low ventilation/filtration, that room is going to fill up with smoke, and everyone is breathing that same air.”

Then apply that to the outdoors.

“I could be smoking a cigarette, you could be a couple of feet from me, depending which way the wind was blowing, you may not even know I’m smoking.”

If you’re indoors, you could be breathing in less fresh air than you think.

“Everybody in a room together is constantly breathing air that just came out of the lungs of other people in that room. And depending on the ventilation rate, it could be as much as 3% or 4% of the air you’re breathing just came out of the lungs of other people in that room,” Allen said.

He describes this as respiratory backwash.

“Normally, that’s not a problem, right? We do this all the time. We’re always exchanging our respiratory microbiomes with each other. But if someone’s sick and infectious … those aerosols can carry the virus. That’s a problem.”

It’s airborne

“We’ve known for decades how to keep people safe in buildings from infection, from airborne infectious diseases like this one,” Allen said.

From the beginning of the pandemic, Allen and other experts have waved red flags, saying that the way we were thinking about transmission of Covid-19 — surfaces, large respiratory droplets — was missing the point.

“Hand washing and social distancing are appropriate but, in our view, insufficient to provide protection from virus-carrying respiratory microdroplets released into the air by infected people. This problem is especially acute in indoor or enclosed environments, particularly those that are crowded and have inadequate ventilation,” hundreds of scientists stated in an open letter in July 2020.Eventually, the World Health Organization and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention acknowledged what the experts had been saying all along: that Covid-19 could also spread by small aerosolized particles that can travel more than 6 feet.

The coronavirus itself is very small — about 0.1 microns — but that doesn’t affect how far it can travel.

“The size of the virus itself doesn’t matter because, as we say, the virus is never naked in air. In other words, the virus is always traveling in respiratory particles that develop in our lungs. And those are all different sizes,” Allen said.

Singing or coughing can emit particles as large as 100 microns (almost the width of a human hair), he said, but the virus tends to travel in smaller particles — between 1 and 5 microns.

The size of these particles affects not only how far it can travel but how deeply we can breathe it into our lungs, and how we should approach protecting ourselves from this virus.

“When you’re talking about an airborne disease, there’s the what’s right around you, you know, the sort of the people who you know can cough in your face, the 6 feet thing, and then there’s the broader indoor air, because indoor air is recirculated,” said Max Sherman, a leader on the Epidemic Task Force for the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers.

Dilute and clean

“Outdoors is safer than indoors” has become an accepted mantra with Covid-19. Allen points out that protecting ourselves indoors is where our focus should always be, even beyond the pandemic.

“We’re [an] indoors species. We spend 90% of our time indoors. The air we breathe indoors has a massive impact on our health, whether you think about infectious disease or anything else, but it just has escaped the public consciousness for a long time,” he said.

Making sure our indoor air is healthy is not that complicated, Sherman said. “You just want to reduce the number of particles that might be carrying Covid or any other nasty [virus].”

The way you do that is through ventilation and filtration.

Filtration — just like it sounds — is filtering or cleaning the air, removing the infected particles. But think of ventilation as diluting the air. You’re bringing more fresh air in to reduce the concentration of those particles.

Dilution is exactly why we haven’t seen superspreader events outdoors, Allen says.

“We have hardly any transmission outdoors. Why is that? Unlimited dilution, because you have unlimited ventilation. And so, even in crowded protests or outdoor sporting events like the Super Bowl, we just don’t see superspreading happening. But if we did, we’d have the signal be loud and clear. We just don’t see it. It’s all indoors in these underperforming, unhealthy spaces.”

Healthy spaces

Even before the advent of HVAC systems, ventilation was integrated into many building designs.

The 1901 Tenement Housing Act of New York required every tenement building — a building with multifamily households — to have ventilation, running water and gas light.

Builders added ventilation to many of these buildings with a shaft in the middle that runs from the roof to the ground, allowing more airflow.

“In the late 19th century, people are finally starting to understand how disease spreads. So airshafts and the accompanying ventilation were seen as a solution to the public health crises that were happening in tenement buildings,” said Katheryn Lloyd, director of programming at the Tenement Museum. “There were high cases of tuberculosis, diphtheria and other diseases that spread. Now we know that spread sort of through the air.”

Today, we’re facing the same challenge.

“Getting basic ventilation in your home is important, full stop,” Sherman said.

One of the easiest, cheapest ways to do that is to open your windows.

Open doors or windows at opposite ends of your home to create cross-ventilation, the Environmental Protection Agency advises. Opening the highest and lowest windows — especially if on different floors — of a home can also increase ventilation. Adding an indoor fan can take it even further.

“If a single fan is used, it should be facing (and blowing air) in the same direction the air is naturally moving. You can determine the direction the air is naturally moving by observing the movement of drapes or by holding a light fabric or dropping paper clippings and noting which direction they move,” the EPA says.

Just cracking a window can help a lot, Allen says: “Even propping a window open a couple inches to really facilitate higher air changes, especially if you do it in multiple places in the house, so you can create some pressure differentials.”

It’s important to note that if you have an HVAC system, it must be running to actually circulate or filter the air. The EPA says that these systems run less than 25% of the time during heating and cooling seasons.

“Most of the controls these days have a setting where you can run the fan on low all the time. And that’s usually the best thing to do because that makes sure you’re getting you’re pushing air through the filter all the time and mixing the air up in your in your home,” Sherman advised.

This could be something to keep in mind if you’re going to have visitors or if someone in the household is at higher risk for severe illness.

Choose the most efficient filter your HVAC system can handle, and make sure you routinely change the filters.

Filters have a minimum efficiency reporting value, or MERV, rating that indicates how well they capture small particles. The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers recommends using at least a MERV-13 filter, which it says is at least 85% efficient at capturing particles from 1 to 3 microns.

If that’s not an option, portable air filters can also work well, but the EPA says to use one that is made for the intended room size and meets at least one of these criteria:

• Designed as high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA)
• CADR rated
• Manufacturer says the device will remove most particles below 1 micron

Finding a safe space

When you walk into a space, there’s no good rule of thumb to look around and gauge how well-ventilated it might be, and that can be a challenge when people have been tasked with assessing their own risk.

Allen suggests starting with the basics: Make sure you’re up to date with vaccinations and aware of where Covid-19 numbers stand in your community.

But then it gets harder. Even the number of people in a space isn’t a giveaway of a higher-risk situation.

“The more people in there could be higher-risk because you’re more likely to have someone who’s infectious, but if the ventilation is good, it really doesn’t matter.”

Ventilation standards are based on “an amount of fresh air per person, plus the amount of fresh air per square foot,” Allen explained. “So if you have a good system, the more people that enter the room, the more ventilation is brought in to the room.”

One tool that can help you assess ventilation in a room is a CO2 monitor, something Allen wishes he saw more in public spaces. He likes to carry a portable one, which you can order online for between $100 and $200.

“If you see under 1,000 parts per million, generally, you’re hitting the ventilation targets that are the design standard. But remember, these are not health-based standards. So we want to see higher ventilation rates.”

Allen prefers to see CO2 at or under 800 parts per million. He also notes that just because a space has low CO2 levels, it might not be unsafe if filtration is high, like on an airplane.

A gamechanger for schools

Atlanta Public Schools Superintendent Lisa Herring says the installation of 5,000 air filtration units — enough for every classroom — in her school district is “a gamechanger.”

The district had begun upgrading HVAC systems in several schools even before the pandemic, but federal funding allowed it to add filtration units during a crucial time when masks have become optional.

“It gives a greater level of confidence for us as a system to know that our air filtration systems are in place,” Herring said.

School districts all over the country have been jumping at the opportunity for ventilation upgrades made possible by an influx of federal funding.

An analysis in February by FutureEd, a think tank at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy, found that public schools had earmarked $4.4 billion for HVAC projects, which could grow to almost $10 billion if trends continued.

New Hampshire’s Manchester School District is pouring almost $35 million into upgrading HVAC systems, and interim Superintendent Jennifer Gillis says federal funding is “absolutely key.”

“You think about a district of our size with all the competing demands and the need to be fiscally responsible, a $35 million project, that’s a large project to introduce to our budget. Having those funds available to us lets us do 19 projects — and 19 projects in a very short span of time.”

For Gillis, ventilation has been an important mitigation strategy and an unobtrusive way to keep people safe.

“It’s something that most in the building don’t think about, but it’s a very passive way for us to create safety within the schools. Since the beginning, the goal was always ‘let’s get our kids in, let’s get our staff in, but let’s do it in a way that’s safe for all of them.’ “

Good ventilation isn’t only about keeping students safe from Covid-19, Sherman says. It can also improve their performance in school.

“They’re going to learn better; they’re going to be awake more; they’re going to be more receptive. They’re going to be healthier if they’ve got good indoor air quality,” he said.

Finally front and center

Helping solidify ventilation’s role in the Covid-19 battle, the Biden administration announced a Clean Air in Buildings Challenge last month.

The challenge calls on building operators and owners to improve ventilation by following guidelines laid out by the EPA.

The main actions include creating a clean indoor air action plan, optimizing fresh air ventilation, enhancing air filtration and cleaning, and engaging the building community by communicating with occupants to increase awareness, commitment and participation.

The message may seem overdue, but it’s one that Allen enthusiastically welcomed.

“The White House used its pulpit to say unequivocally that clean air and buildings matter. That’s massive. Regardless of what you think about what will happen next with implementation or what happens with the funding. That is a crystal-clear message that is already being heard by businesses, nonprofits, universities and state leaders. I see these changes happening already.”

[ad_2]

Originally Appeared Here

In November 2021, after a Christmas party in Oslo, Norway, approximately 70 per cent of the 111 interviewed guests were diagnosed with COVID-19. This and many other super-spreader events supported what some scientists had been saying since the start of the pandemic: COVID is airborne.

When an infected person coughs, sneezes, talks or simply breathes, they release saliva droplets of various sizes containing infectious particles. Droplets larger than 100 microns fall down in seconds, typically within a two-meter radius. Another person can then contract the infection either by allowing droplets to land on their mucous membranes or by transferring the virus from their hands to the mucous membranes after touching a contaminated surface. In the first year of the pandemic, the World Health Organization and other public health agencies focused on this sort of large-droplet transmission. Thus, their messaging emphasized sanitizing hands and surfaces, physical distancing, installing Plexiglas, wearing cloth masks and avoiding touching the face.

By mid-2021, however, mounting evidence showed that COVID-19 was primarily spreading through aerosol transmission, which means it can transmit through the air via suspended respiratory fluid droplets smaller than 100 microns. These aerosols are light enough to remain suspended for hours, and can travel more than six feet.

By December 2021, the WHO finally conceded that the COVID-19 virus is airborne. This meant that guidelines based on droplet transmission — such as standing six feet apart and wearing cloth masks — were inadequate infection prevention strategies. In spaces with poor ventilation and minimal air filtration, aerosols build up and persist over time, similar to cigarette smoke. They are then easily inhaled through gaps in face masks.

Combating an airborne virus is challenging in indoor settings. It requires additional measures such as upgrading existing building ventilation, adding stand-alone air filters, installing ultraviolet germicidal irradiation, reducing crowds, limiting time spent indoors and ensuring everyone wears well-fitted medical-grade masks such as N95s.

The lifting of public health measures means that infections will likely increase exponentially. Fortunately, there are some simple things we can all do to stay safe. First, we can get our booster shots and wear well-fitted N95 masks, which can filter out at least 95 per cent of airborne particles. Second, buildings can use HEPA filters in their HVAC systems and open windows whenever possible. Finally, installing DIY Corsi-Rosenthal boxes is a simple, cost-effective means to clean indoor air using materials from a hardware store.

These voluntary measures can help protect the most vulnerable members of our communities, who remain susceptible to serious COVID-19 infections. Moreover, there is sufficient evidence to show that even mild infections can cause debilitating symptoms of “long COVID,” making the need for prevention measures urgent and undeniable.

Despite the lifting of mask mandates, I will still be wearing my N95 for the foreseeable future, especially in crowded indoor spaces. I hope you will join me. Together, we can limit the spread of the virus.

I am grateful to scientist Kimberly Prather for reviewing my article for scientific accuracy.

Shiven Taneja is a high school student from Mississauga, Ont.

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Originally Appeared Here

The big business of retail marijuana is flexing its financial might to influence politics in Colorado, across the country and in our nation’s capital. The industry’s big bucks are approaching a critical mass as more states follow Colorado down the path to legalization — and as Congress eyes what was once unthinkable, ending the federal prohibition on marijuana.

While federal legalization is still on hold — the U.S. House has OK’d it, but it’s iffy in the Senate, and the president opposes legalization — Big Marijuana has been investing in efforts to make it happen in the not-too-distant future. It also spends plenty on sure bets like Colorado — where retail pot is legal but increasingly problematic — to keep pliant politicians friendly.

So, it’s welcome news that a new political force has emerged as a much-needed and long-overdue counterweight.

As reported the other day by our news affiliate Colorado Politics, a Colorado-based, national political action committee has launched to push back at Big Marijuana and battle other drug issues across the country. The super PAC Protect Our Kids touts itself as a “group of parents who are tired of lax drug policies that harm our kids.”

Protect Our Kids will engage as an independent voice in races for legislative and congressional seats nationwide. Its aim will be to take out candidates who support marijuana legalization and bolster candidates opposed to drug use. Protect Our Kids promises to be relentless and focused, not only in its fundraising but also in its spending.

It won’t play favorites with political parties. It is targeting U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace, a Republican member of Congress from South Carolina, in that state’s GOP primary because she supports federal legalization. And the PAC backed a successful primary bid by Colorado’s Democratic state Rep. Yadira Caraveo of Thornton in her run for the newly created 8th Congressional District.

It’s a political stride, and display of clout, that can’t come too soon. As Protect Our Kids helmsman Luke Niforatos details in today’s Perspective section, marijuana money is greasing the wheels of American politics.

“…It is exactly this multibillion-dollar marijuana industry, in tandem with Big Tobacco and Big Alcohol, that is funding the push for legalization and contributing generously to elected officials who are introducing and supporting (federal) legislation,” writes Niforatos, who also serves as executive vice president for Smart Approaches to Marijuana.

“Statewide, the industry has spent more than $7 million in lobbying to reduce or eliminate regulations like the Colorado Clean Indoor Air Act,” he writes.

“Nationally, the industry spent more than $8 million on federal lobbying in 2019 alone, engaging top K-street lobbyists such as Colorado-based Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck.”

Niforatos points out in his commentary that Colorado’s U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet once opposed legalization — back when he was chief of Denver Public Schools. But today, Niforatos writes, Bennet “has received thousands of dollars from the marijuana industry and now seems more than happy to downplay the negative consequences of legalization here.”

Niforatos told Colorado Politics that the objective of his PAC’s efforts in Colorado, where pot is legal, is to ensure policymakers aren’t “a rubber stamp for the marijuana industry.”

“The goal is to hold them accountable, regulate them tightly and do a better job of protecting our kids,” he said.

Given the toll the drug is taking statewide — from soaring traffic fatalities to declining mental health — it’s a goal we all should share.

The Gazette Editorial Board

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Originally Appeared Here

We often turn to air conditioners during hot weather to cope with the heat, but a study has found electric fans are an effective and sustainable choice to circulate air indoors, without sacrificing comfort.

By using indoor fans, the indoor temperature threshold before it becomes uncomfortable for humans (and the main reason why we reach for the air conditioner remote during hot weather) can increase by 3 to 4 ˚C more than air conditioners use alone.

Researchers also conducted a cost-benefit analysis on the environmental impact and found the total benefit of using fans to reduce air conditioner use (from a greenhouse emissions perspective) surpassed even the switch from incandescent light bulbs to LEDs.

Modelling led by the University of Sydney, found that just by slightly increasing indoor air movement by fans can reduce electricity consumption and the associated yearly cost of cooling indoor spaces with air conditioners in Australia by approximately 70 percent.

Despite warmer indoor conditions because of less air conditioner use – the study found using fans still maintained the same comfort levels as a lower indoor temperature with regular air conditioner use.

The findings published in The Lancet Planetary Health was conducted by an international team of experts from the University of Sydney alongside Monash University, University of Newcastle and Radboud University Medical Center, based in the Netherlands.

The work showcases how making the switch to widespread indoor fan use can potentially reduce energy demand and greenhouse gas emissions. 

The key lies in the fundamental way electric fans operate to cool the human body compared to air conditioners. Electric fans generate higher air speeds across the skin surface to achieve a higher heat loss despite warmer temperatures, whilst air conditioners by themselves lower temperatures with little air movement.  

“Through their sole purpose of lowering air temperatures, air conditioners feed a cycle of high electricity consumption – often delivered by fossil fuel power stations that in turn contribute to further increases in emissions,” said co-senior author Professor Ollie Jay, Director of the Heat and Health Research Incubator in the Faculty of Medicine and Health.

“The latest ‘IPCC Sixth Assessment Report on Mitigation of Climate Change’ emphasises the need for adoption of low-emission lifestyles, including cooling choices for thermal comfort,” said lead author Dr Arunima Malik, Senior Lecturer in Sustainability at the School of Physics and Business School.

“Our study confirms that low-cost solutions such as fans have the potential to contribute emission reductions for meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement.”

Optimal conditions for sustainability and comfort

The researchers compared the energy use and associated greenhouse gas emissions by modelling five scenarios with different combinations of fan and air conditioner use. This included situations with fans operating at different speed settings.

After logging data on the impact of the fans on human comfort levels before they begin to feel discomfort, the number of hours above the thermal comfort limit were calculated to determine air conditioner usage, and associated energy use and greenhouse gas emissions.

“To carry out this calculation we needed to process hourly temperature data for an entire year, for the entire continent on a 150,000-cell raster grid. We were able to do this using supercomputers,” said co-senior author Professor Manfred Lenzen of the School of Physics.

They found that operating fans with air speeds of 1·2 m/s with occasional air conditioner use, compared with air conditioners alone, resulted in a 76 percent reduction in energy use (from 5592 GWh to 1344 GWh) and associated greenhouse gas emissions (5091 kilotonnes to 1208 kilotonnes).

“We know that curbing greenhouse gas emissions is the only way we will limit future global warming,” says Professor Jay.

“By increasing indoor air movement with fans, you can feel the same at a higher temperature as you will do at a lower temperature using an air conditioning unit. This is a really easy thing that most people can do now to help reduce the prodigious emissions associated with cooling homes and indoor spaces in Australia.”

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Originally Appeared Here