In the Connecticut General Assembly, 2022 is the Year of the Child, as two years of the COVID pandemic have highlighted weaknesses in services for young people that lawmakers are prepared to address.

Legislators are currently reviewing several major pieces of legislation, ranging from a focus on urban trauma, to better mental-and-behavioral health services and improved air quality in schools.

Gov. Ned Lamont, along with Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate, have all proposed initiatives that would require tens of millions of dollars in funding in attempt to mend the damage that’s has been done over the course of the pandemic, or the decades, in the case of trauma among under-served, inner-city youth.

“For some communities it’s just normal to have mental health issues,” said state Sen. Gary Winfield, D-New Haven, during a public hearing Friday before a joint meeting of the Public Health and Children committees.

“It’s just normal for us to pass trauma along,” Winfield said during a morning portion of the day-long virtual hearing. “And yet, the science and the way we operate has been slow to actually recognize it. You know the schools that we send kids to that are supposed to be safe in their communities, are not as safe because we send kids into schools where many of their peers have the same trauma that they have when they return home or go to school.”

The stresses of homelessness, hunger and domestic and urban violence are a big part of troubled-kids lives.

“And whichever place they go, it’s there,” Winfield said. “It’s complex. It doesn’t end. Remember, that as we are doing this, there are communities that will not respond to what we think of as the normal issue of trauma because that’s about an event or an instance and what theirs is, is trauma that persists for life.”

“There are family crises that we know that have a root of trauma,” said Vannessa Dorantes, the commissioner of the state Department of Children and Families, who is planning a new initiative to address the issue. “And then we also know from a systems’ perspective that there is community, or racialized trauma.” Among the pending legislative proposals is a children’s behavioral cabinet.

“The COVID pandemic has exacerbated what we know is an emerging behavioral-health crisis in children,” she told lawmakers on Friday. “Isolation, disruption in learning, family stress, reduced economic stability, food and housing insecurity, lack of access to timely community-based supports, has resulted in a demand for services that has exceeded the workforce capacity.

In addition to supporting mental-health programming, Republicans who are a 23-13 minority in the Senate and 97-54 in the House of Representatives, have proposed enhancing criminal penalties for some juveniles.

“We need to ensure law enforcement and our justice system have the tools to keep all people safe,” said Senate Minority Leader Kevin Kelly, R-Stratford. “We also need action to prevent crime, to end the cycle of juvenile injustice and a lack of opportunity that pushes people, especially young people, towards crime. We cannot ignore that Connecticut is dead last in job growth and income growth and Connecticut’s economy is failing our children and failing our cities. We need to build a ladder out of poverty.”

Winfield said last week there is room to compromise on some juvenile-crime proposals, including the possibility of electronic monitoring of teens awaiting trial.

Earlier in the week, New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker led a group of mayors from throughout the state asking for a billion-dollar, five-year program to treat kids, train them for jobs, and provide employment opportunities and safe spaces.

With a projected $1.9-billion budget surplus – coincidentally in an election year – there is a bipartisan legislative will to acknowledge the isolation that children have coped with over the last two years or more.

For state Sen. Marilyn Moore, D-Bridgeport, gun violence is also a major children’s issue. “Over my lifetime I have seen it flare up over and over again here,” Moore said Thursday during a committee-level confirmation hearing for acting Public Health Commissioner Manisha Juthani. “We always seem to put a Band-Aid on it.”

She said that during a recent round table conversation with inner-city youth from throughout the state, young adults spoke starkly of the trauma caused by the neighborhood shootings that continue the cycle of violence. “They can’t even explain why they’re acting out,” Moore said.

“This is such a troubling topic and I think you raised such an important point, because there are so many survivors and observers of gun violence who may not actually be the recipient of the actual bullet, and yet the damage that is done is far beyond what we can really conceptualize, I think,” Juthani said. She pointed out that there is an injury-prevention group in the Department of Public Health that is focused on it, and Gov. Ned Lamont’s budget includes initiatives to reduce gun violence.

“When a young person is engaged in criminal activity it is often a manifestation of deep, unmet mental or behavioral health needs: exposure to repeat trauma,” Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin told lawmakers on Friday, citing studies indicating that childhood trauma is “off-the-charts” among those who wind up in the criminal justice system. He stressed the importance for better mental health care inside juvenile detention centers.

This past week, legislative committees were still in the process of agreeing on concepts for public hearings, including the air-quality initiative, which the Public Health Committee on Thursday agreed to raise for a public hearing in March, as the legislature heads to its early, May 4 adjournment. Educators throughout the state complained that most schools do not have the right kind of heating, ventilating and air conditioning systems (HVAC) to help eliminate airborne viruses such as COVID.

“We have indoor air quality standards for businesses like pet stores to ensure animals there remain healthy. That makes it all the more jarring to lack such regulations in our schools,” said Sen. Saud Anwar, D-South Windsor, a physician who is co-chairman of the legislative Public Health Committee, which will set a hearing date on the proposal once nonpartisan lawyers for the General Assembly assign it a bill number.

“The pandemic showed us we simply can’t delay in remediating HVAC systems in our schools,” said State Rep. Jonathan Steinberg, D-Westport, the committee’s other co-chairman. “Some retrofits, like adding controls or adding small circulation/filtration units, don’t have to be expensive. And we need better protocols for effective maintenance.”

[email protected] Twitter: @KenDixonCT

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SEATTLE — King County will lift its indoor mask mandate next month as long as local COVID-19 trends hold or improve, the county’s health officer announced Friday following new federal changes that loosen nationwide guidelines for face coverings.

The news marks a reflection of recent falling hospitalization and infection numbers, which skyrocketed to record levels during the region’s surge of the omicron variant, and improving vaccination levels, according to a statement from King County health officer Dr. Jeff Duchin.

If county residents can maintain decreasing COVID-19 trends, the mask mandate would lift March 21, the same day Gov. Inslee has announced the mask mandate will end for schools, child care facilities, grocery stores, gyms, bars and other indoor establishments.

Under new classification methods from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, King County is considered to be at a “low COVID-19 community level,” though Duchin noted that the classification “does not mean COVID is over.”

“A layered approach to prevention remains important, particularly to help protect those at higher risk of severe illness,” he said.

Residents should continue to stay up-to-date on vaccinations and boosters, improve indoor air quality through ventilation and filtration and — especially for those at high risk of severe illness — mask when in crowded and poorly ventilated indoor spaces.

“And, we all need to be able to employ layered prevention measures when COVID-19 risk increases,” Duchin said.

King County is averaging around 400 new infections per day — slightly higher than, but much closer to, pre-omicron levels in mid-December. The county is also reporting about 10 daily hospitalizations and six deaths per day.

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The field experiments were conducted in a vape shop that was randomly selected (refer to the Methods section for details). This vape shop occupies a single room with an employee-only area on one side of the room. Approximately two meters away from where customers and employees vaped (Fig. 1b), the c-Air device was placed on the display countertop to capture e-cig generated aerosols. In addition to the c-Air device used within the vape shop, an Aerodynamic Particle Sizer (APS) was configured to take samples every two minutes to provide an independent measurement of the particle size distribution within the vape shop. The measured mean particle diameters are reported in Supplementary Fig. S1. Note that the particle sizing resolution of the APS device is < 500 nm. Therefore, the relatively large variations of the mean particle diameter shown in Supplementary Fig. S1 reflect the complexity and rapid changes of the indoor environment dynamics.

During these field experiments, c-Air was controlled by our team to collect air samples, with additional, on-demand measurements done upon the observation of vaping activities. The time between two consecutive c-Air measurements ({Delta }T_{k}) was kept between 5 and 30 min (Fig. 1c) with an average of ~ 16 min. Measurements were also done when no vaping was observed to ensure that ({Delta }T_{k}) was smaller than 30 min. Occasionally, multiple customer vaping events (e.g., continuous e-cig puffing in short periods of time) occurred between two consecutive c-Air measurements and these time instances were marked for further analysis. During each measurement step, c-Air sampled the indoor air for 60 s (sampling ~ 13L of air) and simultaneously recorded time-lapse inline holograms of the collected particles at 2 fps. After the initial 60-s time window, the vacuum pump stopped and the hologram recording continued for an additional 30 s, totaling 90 s of imaging time at 2 fps. A deep neural network20,25 was designed to reconstruct the captured time-lapse holograms (Fig. 2a), providing 180 complex-valued reconstructed images, each with independent amplitude and phase channels. At each time frame, the individual particles were detected via thresholding of both the amplitude and phase channels with an adaptive threshold of five standard deviations above the mean value of each image. The union of these binary spatial masks from both the amplitude and the phase channels provides an approximate boundary for each detected particle’s region-of-interest (ROI) at each time point. Having detected a collection of ROIs for all the captured aerosols, the particle volume at any time point t (see e.g., Supplementary Videos 1–3) was estimated by integrating the phase values ((phi)) within each one of these ROIs, i.e.,

$$Vleft( t right) = frac{lambda }{{2pi {Delta }n}} cdot mathop sum limits_{i,j} phi left( {Ileft( {i,j;t} right)} right)$$

(1)

Figure 2

Calculation of the volatility of each detected aerosol: from raw holograms to volume decay rate. (a) A full field-of-view raw inline hologram and some example reconstructions showing the phase and amplitude channels separately. (b) An example aerosol image and the evolution of its holographic phase and amplitude channels at time points 0, τ/2 and τ, where τ is the exponential time constant (see Eq. (3)). (c) The plot of the active pixels in the amplitude channel as a function of time (left) and the exponential decay of the particle volume (right).

where we assumed a refractive index difference of ({Delta }n) = 0.4 with respect to air/vacuum; this is a reasonable assumption as it reflects the typical refractive index value for PG and VG32,33. The phase values were unwrapped and the majority of the particles had phase values between [0, 2 (pi)]. In this equation, (lambda) is the illumination wavelength (850 nm) and I is the reconstructed complex image of each particle within the ROI. The summation in Eq. (1) is carried over a set of lateral pixels {i,j} defined by an additional spatial mask generated specifically for the particles of interest. These binary masks were created by taking the pixels that are at least one standard deviation above the mean value of all the pixels in the ROI.

Based on Eq. (1), the volume decay of each aerosol was approximated using an exponential fit:

$$begin{array}{*{20}c} {Vleft( t right) = alpha e^{ – kappa t} + b} \ end{array}$$

(2)

In Eq. (2), the exponential term was optimized to fit the volume decay of the particle, whereas the second term was optimized to match any time-invariant term, representing some of the particles that do not fully evaporate (see e.g., Supplementary Videos 2 and 3). The lifetime of the particle, (tau), is further defined as:

$$begin{array}{*{20}c} {tau = frac{1}{kappa }} \ end{array}$$

(3)

To a first-order approximation, the retrieved κ value does not depend on the initial particle size and volume, and therefore can be considered a figure of merit for the volatility of an evaporating particle.

To be able to quantify particles with different sizes, the initial volume of a particle, (V(t_{0} {)}), right after it lands on the collection substrate of c-Air is divided by its corresponding lifetime (tau):

$$begin{array}{*{20}c} {Delta V_{tau } = frac{{V(t_{0} {)}}}{tau }} \ end{array}$$

(4)

giving us the volume decay rate (Delta V_{tau }) (µm3/sec) (see Fig. 2b, c).

During the four days of c-Air experiments in the vape shop, we conducted a total of 115 different measurements, whereas the APS sampled the air at a much faster rate of one sample per two minutes. The particle emission due to human vaping is depicted by the sharp rises in particle concentration measured by APS (see the red bars in Fig. 3). To reveal the dynamic changes of all the collected particles (usually on the order of hundreds to thousands of particles per c-Air measurement), the average volume decay rate of each measurement was calculated and plotted in Fig. 3, blue dotted lines. Fourteen of these measurements were taken when there was no vaping observed, and these pre-vaping points were marked using solid dots in the plots. The volume decay rate (μm3/sec) quantifies a particle’s evaporation speed, and therefore higher volume decay rates indicate faster evaporation and higher volatility. The correlation that is observed in Fig. 3 between the dynamics of the mean volume decay rate and the APS measurements reports a link between the e-cig emissions of vapers and aerosol volatility (Fig. 3). Also, note that the majority of local minimums and maximums of the c-Air measured volume decay rates reported in Fig. 3 for different measurement days match the corresponding local extreme points in our APS measurements. The mismatch between APS measurements and our c-Air analysis results might be due to the nonhomogeneous air circulation within the room, since these devices were placed at different spatial locations.

Figure 3

The change of the mean volume decay rate and the percentage of volatile aerosols throughout different days of experiments. Solid points refer to the pre-vaping measurements. (a), (b) and (c) mark the data points where there was no observation of a vaping event prior to c-Air sampling, whereas, a’, b’ and c’ mark the measurement points where vaping was observed in the vape shop.

Given the complex chemical composition of the captured e-cig aerosols (from various e-liquids), we defined three categories of aerosols according to the volumetric evolution of the imaged particles: volatile, semi-volatile and non-volatile particles (see Fig. 4 and Supplementary Videos 1–4). A particle is defined to be volatile if it fully evaporates (i.e., its volume gets smaller than an empirical threshold of 0.1 μm3 before the end of each measurement) and its volume exhibits a smooth exponential decay (see e.g., Supplementary Video 1). Since the c-Air device records an additional set of 60 frames after the air sampling is complete, all the volatile particles that were captured by c-Air fully evaporated within our observation time window. The mean and standard deviation of the volume decay rates of all the volatile particles captured in 115 measurements were used to further differentiate the remaining particles, forming an empirical definition for semi-volatile particles, i.e., they exhibit an initial volume decay, followed by a second phase where they remain larger than 0.1 μm3 in volume. Semi-volatile particles can be coagulated particles or particles with solid cores10,34 (see e.g., Supplementary Videos 2 and 3). The remaining particles that did not exhibit detectable evaporation were defined as non-volatile particles. These particles exhibited a very small volume decay rate which was empirically found to be less than 0.05 μm3/sec. For these non-volatile particles, the subtle changes in their measured volumes as a function of time might be related to the deformation of the sampling pad after the particle’s impaction (see Supplementary Video 4). Also, the changes in moisture, especially with humectants like PG and VG, might also result in subtle differences in the measured volumes. For each c-Air measurement point, the percentage of volatile and semi-volatile particles combined is color-coded and shown in Fig. 3. The change in the ratio of the volatile particles to other detected particles was observed to be similar to the time dynamics of the volume decay rate that we measured using c-Air (see the colorbar in Fig. 3 for each measurement day). This indicates that the percentage of the volatile particles within the detected aerosols can be used as an indirect measure of aerosol volatility and volume decay rate.

Figure 4

Characteristic volume changes of a (a) volatile, (b) semi-volatile and (c) non-volatile particle, sampled within the vape shop.

To further expand our analysis, we compared the statistical distribution of the volume decay rate of the particles captured post-vaping and pre-vaping by applying a Wilcoxon rank-sum test35, as shown in Supplementary Fig. S2, which tests the null hypothesis that the volume decay rates are sampled from continuous distributions with equal medians. A statistically significant increase in the volume decay rate of post-vaping aerosol measurements was observed with p < 0.05. As part of this analysis, we focused on three pre-vaping measurements, i.e., a, b and c marked in Fig. 3, that were conducted while no human vaping was observed in the vape shop. Given the dynamic indoor environmental conditions throughout a day, in terms of e.g., temperature, humidity and opening/closing of the outside door, these vape-free measurements within the vape shop can be considered as a background state for comparison purposes. An increase in aerosol volatility and volatile particle ratio can be clearly seen in the following three subsequent measurements points a’, b’ and c’ (see Fig. 3) during which the customers in the shop vaped, significantly increasing the e-cig generated aerosols. Note that these time spots were not the only vaping events observed in our field testing. Furthermore, dense and rapid vaping events within the vape shop also increased the aerosol volatility that we measured. For example, a continuous burst of vaping was observed close to our c-Air device on March 9th, at around 14:30 PM (Fig. 3). As a result of this continuous vaping within the shop, a sharp rise in PM10 emission, particle volatility, as well as volatile particle ratio, is clearly observed in Fig. 3. In this case, c-Air measurements revealed that > 95% of the particles fell in the category of volatile particles and the measured volume decay rates were also notably higher compared to other measurement points within the same day, which shows how dense, successive vaping events can significantly increase the aerosol volatility within a room.

Several limitations of the presented research might affect its generalizability. First, the chemical composition of secondhand e-cig aerosols remained unknown during the field testing (involving unknown, random customers/vapors), and the environmental variables such as the room temperature and humidity were not measured/controlled. Second, the devices we used (APS and c-Air) were placed at different spatial locations. Without sufficient ventilation, the measurement results of the two devices might not be exactly comparable. Third, the sampling using c-Air device was manually controlled, providing variable time intervals between vapes and measurements. Finally, the interactions between the droplets and the sampling substrate remained uncontrolled; liquid diffusion inside the sampling pad might generate some uncertainty on our estimation of volatility. Further improvements of the c-Air device and more controlled experiments (without impacting the cost-effectiveness and the field-portability of the measurement system) can be used to provide more insightful information regarding indoor vaping.

In conclusion, we conducted field experiments in a vape shop to characterize the volatility of e-cig emission using a field-portable, high-throughput device which can sample aerosols at a rate of 13 L/min and continuously image the collected particles on an impaction-based sampler. These field experiments were carried out in a vape shop where the customers and employees vaped their own e-cigs, resulting in the vaporization of e-liquids with different chemical constituents. The c-Air device enabled us to image these microscale particles generated by e-cigs during their evaporation lifetimes, allowing us to quantify their numbers, size and volatility. These field experiments revealed that vaping in the vape shop resulted in an increase in the percentage of volatile and semi-volatile aerosols during the successive post exhalation time.

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Schenk said the pandemic has simply brought attention to indoor air quality from outside the building industry. On top of fostering occupants’ health, increasing a building’s clean air can boost productivity and focus.

“In schools, that means improved performance on tests and other screenings for students, as well as increased attendance,” Schenk said. “For teachers, that means improved performance and the ability for students to stay engaged with lessons for longer periods. In an office setting, that means improved productivity throughout the work day.”

Studies have found a correlation between better ventilation and higher student test scores.

People (salaries, health benefits, etc.) are hundreds of times more expensive than energy costs or using better filters, said Wade Conlan, an engineer at Hanson who leads the building readiness team at the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers.

Upgrades that school districts and other building owners could make to improve indoor air quality range from immediate solutions that cost a few thousand dollars (like assessing their systems or installing better filters) to expensive overhauls of HVAC systems.

“Maintaining our facilities and providing safe and effective learning environments for our students and staff continues to be a priority for the district,” said Jon Wesney, the Centerville City Schools director of business operations.

ExploreIs the COVID vaccine safe? Does it work? Who’s at risk?

Local schools make improvements

Dayton Public, Huber Heights and Centerville, three of the largest school districts in Montgomery County, have plans or have already used federal COVID-19 funds to upgrade their HVAC systems. Northmont schools also upgraded HVAC using COVID-19 money.

Centerville schools spent about $3.7 million between federal COVID-19 dollars and its own money to upgrade its HVAC systems in the buildings between 2020 and 2021, said Sarah Swan, the district’s spokeswoman. Centerville schools got more than $9 million in federal COVID-19 relief, according to the Ohio Department of Education.

“During the past school year, we focused on maximizing air flow by increasing the amount of fresh outdoor air circulating within our buildings,” Wesney said. “This included controlling and monitoring the amount of fresh air by adjusting HVAC programming controls to increase ventilation, as well as installing MERV-13 filters, as recommended by the CDC.”

Other school districts are still working on plans to upgrade their building’s HVAC. Dayton Public Schools expects to present a plan to the Dayton Public School Board sometime in the spring to use $13.5 million of its federal COVID-19 relief dollars on upgrading HVAC systems, said Elizabeth Lolli, the superintendent, including replacing outdated systems. Dayton Public got more than $141 million in COVID-19 relief aid.

Northmont schools spent $280,031 in relief funds to upgrade HVAC at six of the district’s buildings. The last two buildings were newer, said district spokeswoman Jenny Wood. The district got about $8.3 million overall in COVID-19 relief money, according to ODE.

ExploreFew large school districts still have a mask mandate

Wood noted some of the district’s buildings are more than 50 years old.

“The equipment was installed to not only just help purify the air in our buildings to help against COVID-19, but also for the residual benefits of increased air quality during the normal cold and flu season,” Wood said.

Huber Heights also plans to use some of its federal money on HVAC and building upgrades, but does not have a specific amount budgeted yet.

Not all schools plan to upgrade. Kristy Creel, a spokeswoman for Xenia schools, cited the district’s newer systems, built in 2012, and its plan to open a new middle school in 2024. The district does not plan to spend federal COVID-19 funds on updating HVAC. Instead, the district spent the money on remote teachers, technology and cleaning supplies, she said.

Fairborn spokeswoman Pam Gayheart said that district does not plan to use COVID-19 dollars for HVAC upgrades. Fairborn voters passed a levy in 2020 to build a high school and middle school. The district is currently building an intermediate school, set to open in the fall, and opened a primary school in 2020.

What building experts recommend

A century ago, it was standard practice to circulate more outdoor air in buildings to fight airborne infections, said William Bahnfleth, an architectural engineering professor at Pennsylvania State University, chair of the ASHRAE Epidemic Task Force and a signatory on the Science editorial.

“At some point, we assumed that medicine could pretty much take care of infectious diseases. You could be vaccinated against some of the worst things,” Bahnfleth said. “After the pandemic, we need to rethink and do something about addressing infection and risk mitigation with new quality standards.”

Many early preventative measures for COVID-19 focused on surface cleaning, before it became widely accepted that the disease spreads through the air, he said.

ExploreDayton area continues to see fewer COVID inpatients a month after setting record high

Recommendations on how buildings can reduce airborne infectious aerosols from ASHRAE include:

• Assess current HVAC systems to make sure they are operating as intended and meeting minimum standards for outdoor airflow.
• Increase outdoor air coming into the building through ventilation.
• Filter indoor air. This can be achieved by using filters rated at MERV-13 or better in central HVAC systems or freestanding air cleaners in rooms.
• Only use air cleaners for which the evidence of effectiveness and safety is clear. Steer clear of unproven methods like ionizer air purifiers and devices that use hydrogen peroxide photocatalytic oxidation. Research into these emerging technologies show mixed results.

Conlan said assessing a building’s HVAC system should be the first step and may cost a few thousand dollars for a midsized building. Too often, for example, building operators close sources of outdoor air to save on heating and cooling costs and aren’t meeting minimum standards for outdoor airflow, he said.

Then it is a matter of considering whether to increase outdoor airflow or use other engineering controls. It’s a balancing act since increasing outdoor air coming into the building can increase heating and cooling costs. But the future of HVAC systems may be building customizable systems that can bring in more outdoor air during surges of COVID, flu or other airborne illness, but cut down on this when the risk is lower, posited Bahnfleth.

Conlan said spending a bit more on air filters is the next best step. Buildings already have to replace filters in central units every few months and likely are already using MERV-8 filters. So upgrading to better filters (MERV-13 is recommended) would reduce particles and airborne contaminants and only cost about 20% to 30% more, Conlan estimated.

ABOUT THE PATH FORWARD

Our team of investigative reporters digs into what you identified as pressing issues facing our community. The Path Forward project seeks solutions to these problems by asking how the community can overcome the COVID-19 crisis and prevent another one. Follow our work at DaytonDailyNews.com/path-forward.

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