The annual Portland Winter Light Festival celebrated the season, with more than 100 illuminated works of art spread out over much of the Portland metro area. February 4, 2022 Beth Nakamura/StaffThe Oregonian

Monday marks two long years since the governor announced the first case of COVID-19 in Oregon, and many public health experts are cautiously optimistic the worst of the pandemic has finally passed.

Dr. Kevin Winthrop, a physician and epidemiologist at Oregon Health & Science University, forecasts the future as downright bright.

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The asthma & allergy friendly® Certification Program is a globally recognized certification mark for products and services that benefit people with asthma and allergies. The program has collaborated with several entities including Dyson, Rabbit Air, and Benjamin Moore to approve asthma- and allergy-friendly products.

With nearly 20% of the world population being affected by asthma and allergies, it is important that there are resources available that help improve air quality and establish barriers to allergens that trigger symptoms.

But as member of the program and CEO of Allergy Standards Limited Dr. John McKeon would explain, it’s less about the products and more about the patient.

‘It’s not about the product, we say it’s about them,” McKeon said. “Our certification talks about people, it’s doesn’t talk about product features. We’re certainly not exclusive, you can’t be as a certification body, and we’re trying to focus more on the outcome.”

As an emergency room doctor, McKeon frequently received questions from parents of children with asthma and allergy exacerbation regarding how they could be more proactive in managing symptoms and limiting emergency room visits.

McKeon’s philosophy, and the philosophy of the certification program, involves mitigating allergen exposure in a variety of household products; whether it’s furnace filters, vacuum cleaners, paint, or electrical appliances, each product should be able to fulfill the performance and suitability criteria established by the program.

“We looked at products all over the home, because we know that single interventions on their own, such as just using allergen bedding, doesn’t work, you need to have a whole of house approach,” McKeon said. “Our philosophy very much is that some chronic health conditions don’t necessarily need more emergency rooms and more medication, they probably need more education and patient empowerment.”

McKeon added that the program encourages people with asthma and allergies to get engaged with managing their own wellness.

Though he noted that medicine will always be “the cornerstone” of asthma and allergy, and that patients should always seek out professional help if needed, he encouraged those affected by asthma and allergies to know their environmental triggers, partake in asthma and allergy action plans, and create a safer and more allergy and asthma indoor environment with the products they select.

“Having an allergy action plan, and having your symptom diary and being very much more proactive about it I think is the future,” McKeon said. “I think that patient engagement, (holistic care) is going to be the future, and because we know now our emotional health and our psychological health is all very much connected to our physical health.”

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Lackluster or altogether lacking details about pollution disproportionately impacts low-income and communities of color, according to a newly researched layer of environmental injustice from the University of Michigan.

Researchers say unequal exposure to pollution by vulnerable populations has been widely studied, but not how limited or missing data about that pollution compounds harm. A newly published study shows lacking information is an important cause of pollution exposure in low-income households and communities of color.

Catherine Hausman, associate professor of public policy at U-M, said environmental justice issues are a long-standing, unaddressed problem nationally in the United States. She said despite progress on environmental protection made during the last 40 years, there remains a long way to go in making sure support hits the ground in a just way.

“We know that communities of color and low-income communities are hit more by all kinds of pollutants. And we know that a lot of policy to address environmental protection just hasn’t taken that into account. And so, we wanted to ask what are some of the barriers to that? And specifically, what is the role of information,” she said.

Hausman worked on this research with Samuel Stolper, an environmental and energy economist with U-M’s School for Environment and Sustainability. Their goal was to explain how information failures affect pollution exposure and household well-being, particularly how those impacts range across income levels.

The scientists agreed with common findings that low-income homes and communities of color are exposed to more pollution, but they also found those households are exposed to more hidden pollution and suffer greater harm from a lack of information. People in those areas might make different choices to better protect their health if more informed, they hypothesized.

“The existing research says, ‘Well, why don’t people just use money to protect themselves? Why don’t people just move to a cleaner community or why don’t people just install air filters in their house or water filters or whatever it is?’ And all of that assumes that people have the information they need and have a political voice and we wanted to investigate what happens when that’s not true,” Hausman said.

Sparse air-quality monitoring by regulators and heavy reliance on polluters to self-report their emissions create further hidden pollution, the researcher said, which disproportionately affects low-income households and communities of color.

“I think at state and federal levels, there’s a role for better monitoring of pollution and better publication of pollution data,” Hausman said.

One community leader said she can confirm Detroiters have experienced what the recently published U-M research says.

She pointed to communication gaps when environmental hazards happened in past years in industry-heavy southwest Detroit, said Laprisha Berry Daniels, executive director for nonprofit Detroiters Working for Environmental Justice.

“There was a time when there was an incident in industry in southwest Detroit and southwest Detroit residents were not evacuated, and a neighboring community, Melvindale, was evacuated. And folks in southwest Detroit did not get information about what was happening. And folks in a neighboring community did receive information about what was happening,” Daniels said.

An explosion at the Marathon Detroit Refinery in southwest Detroit in 2013 led to evacuations in neighboring Melvindale, but not in Detroit.

“This does happen and there is no system in place for Detroiters, to alert them of these environmental hazards. Or if there is a system in place, it doesn’t work. Because residents in southwest Detroit did not know what was happening. They were not informed of what was happening,” Daniels said.

The nonprofit leader said yet another layer of environmental justice concern is revealed by the U-M research: some solutions may be financially out of reach for those most impacted.

For example, she said both using an air conditioner rather than opening windows and also running an indoor air purifier can often provide better air quality inside homes close to industrial polluters; but both cost money, not only to buy the appliances but also to power them and replace filters.

“We have to think about the economics of that, the cost of that when there’s already undue energy burden on a lot of impacted communities and justice communities there. There’s already that concern. These are lower-income communities,” Daniels said.

“And then you want me to plug up something else, right? I just can’t afford to plug anything else up.”

There is an effort to improve the way information is shared – specifically in southwest Detroit.

The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy received a $200,000 grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to make a game plan to close communication lag times and promote better community health in Southwest Detroit.

The project was delayed because of the COVID-19 pandemic as it requires intense community conversations and meetings with various community groups, and lack of internet access for many in the community meant virtual meetings wouldn’t work well, said Hugh McDiarmid Jr., EGLE communication manager.

“Southwest Detroit was chosen because it is such a microcosm of many of the challenges faced by environmental justice and frontline communities across Michigan and elsewhere,” he said.

The goal of the pilot resiliency plan is to develop a method that can serve as a template for other communities to adopt, McDiarmid said.

Meanwhile, the White House recently unveiled the beta version of its new climate justice screening tool that will map areas most in need of federal investment. The effort is expected to help achieve President Joe Biden’s mandate that 40 percent of federal investments in sustainable and green infrastructure – such as clean energy, pollution cleanup, and water improvements – go to communities that are marginalized, underserved, and overburdened by pollution.

Related articles:

EPA investigates discrimination claim in Kalamazoo air pollution oversight

Detroit air pollution levels drop amid coronavirus shutdown

Landfill gas plant, chemical supplier fined for air pollution violations

Marathon fined over rotten odors, soot emissions at Detroit refinery

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Air Purification Solutions Deployed to Reduce Airborne Virus Particles and Augment Cleaning Protocols at Luxury, World-Renowned Hotel in Greece

STAMFORD, Conn.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–
WellAir, a leading provider of indoor air disinfection and purification solutions, announced today that its Plasma Air HVAC air purification products have been selected by the Four Seasons Astir Palace Hotel in Athens, Greece to help reduce exposure to airborne pathogens and pollutants throughout the hotel. This partnership expands WellAir’s portfolio of partnerships with a variety of hotels across the world.

The Plasma Air ionization solutions are designed to neutralize and reduce airborne pathogens, including viruses and bacteria. The hotel is deploying solutions in all common areas, such as lobbies and restaurants. Guest rooms and suites also benefit from the improved air quality that the Plasma Air solutions provide by reducing airborne pollutants and viral particles. In recent third-party testing, the Plasma Air solution demonstrated a reduction in a surrogate for SARS-CoV-2 by 99.99%.*

“Clean indoor air is becoming a valued commodity in the hotel industry, and with that, an HVAC air purification system is no longer a nice to have, but a competitive must-have for the hospitality industry,” said Steve Grenon, Chief Technology Officer of WellAir. “We know that the leisure and hospitality industry has been hit hard during this pandemic, but we are now seeing hoteliers recovering rapidly as guests’ confidence return, and that trend is set to accelerate with the help of air cleaning technologies. The Four Seasons Astir Palace is in the vanguard of the world’s leading hotels by understanding that indoor air quality needs to be addressed, and it is setting a standard that many will follow.”

The Plasma Air solutions use safe and effective bipolar ionization to improve indoor air quality. Much like sunlight does in the atmosphere, the Plasma Air technology produces a natural bio-climate rich in positive and negative oxygen ions. The negative ions contain an extra electron while the positive ions are missing an electron, resulting in an unstable condition. To restabilize, these bipolar ions seek out atoms and molecules in the air to trade electrons with, effectively neutralizing particulate matter, bacteria and virus cells, odorous gases and aerosols, and VOCs.

The Four Seasons Astir Palace is part of the global five-star Four Seasons Group and hosts many of the world’s business leaders and celebrities in its 303 rooms. The hotel has implemented stringent COVID-19 cleaning protocols to keep guests and staff safe and comfortable. This protocol now includes Plasma Air systems to provide an even higher-level cleansing.

“Hotels worldwide need to provide a sanctuary for guests, and that extends to their protection against pathogens that cause illness,” explained Paris Karavidas of the Property Operations and Maintenance department. “The Four Seasons is recognized as one of the world’s best hotel brands, and five-star accommodations require an environment that is clean and safe. The installation of the Plasma Air systems helps keep our guests and staff safe by reducing airborne viruses and other pollutants that could threaten their health.”

“Our technical team examined a range of options to improve indoor air quality and reduce airborne pathogens, and Plasma Air’s ionization technology was selected as the most impactful and cost-effective solution. Our guests have already noticed a significant improvement in the indoor air quality, and our staff feels safer working in this protected environment,” added Karavidas.

ABOUT WellAir and Plasma Air

Plasma Air is part of WellAir, a company with a mission to reduce indoor airborne pollutants and pathogens to create living, working, and healing spaces that help foster human health, productivity, and wellbeing. The Plasma Air HVAC air purification systems use highly efficient and safe bipolar ionization technology to neutralize and reduce indoor air pathogens and pollutants. WellAir and its brands can be found installed in hundreds of healthcare and long-term care facilities, schools, hotels, offices, and residences in more than 60 countries worldwide.

*Data on file

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220201005291/en/

Cindy Caserta

Vice President, Marketing

[email protected]

203-451-3131

Source: WellAir

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Food Environ Virol. 2022 Feb 25. doi: 10.1007/s12560-022-09515-2. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Side by side air sampling was conducted using a PTFE filter membrane as dry sampler and an impinger containing a suitable culture medium as a wet sampler. Most of the samples were collected from two hospitals and few air samples were collected from private houses of non-hospitalized confirmed COVID-19 patients. The collected air samples were analyzed using RT-PCR. The results indicated that all air samples collected from the hospitals were PCR negative for SARS-CoV-2. While two of four air samples collected from the house of non-hospitalized patients were PCR positive. In this study, most of the hospitalized patients had oxygen mask and face mask, and hence this may be a reason for our negative results regarding the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in indoor air of the hospitals, while non-hospitalized patients did not wear oxygen and protective face masks in their houses. Moreover, a very high concentration of particles in the size range of droplet nuclei (< 5 µm) was identified compared to particles in the size range of respiratory droplets (> 5-10 µm) in the areas where patients were hospitalized. It can be concluded that using face mask by patients can prevent the release of viruses into the indoor air, even in hospitals with a high density of patients.

PMID:35212948 | DOI:10.1007/s12560-022-09515-2

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