From Zeynep Tufekci’s column: … … … … … From the Gothamist article: (The New York Times link is very long because it’s a gift link I got off Twitter.)
From Zeynep Tufekci’s column:
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.
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After getting deluged by calls from sales representatives peddling various devices, Howard Taras, a medical consultant with the San Diego Unified School District, turned to scientists at the University of California at San Diego rather than take the companies’ claims at face value. He told me that Kimberly Prather, a professor of atmospheric chemistry at the university, where Taras is a faculty member, advised the school district to install MERV-13 filters in its centralized HVAC system and to add portable cleaners with HEPA filters to rooms where supplementation was needed. The district followed her advice, Taras told me. He said that many other school districts in the area, outmatched by the sales representatives, succumbed to the pitches and installed systems that did less.
Some school districts around the country, guided by scientists at nearby universities, constructed D.I.Y. portable filters using box fans, duct tape and MERV-13-rated filters, all of which can be purchased at hardware stores. These devices are called Corsi-Rosenthal boxes, after the engineers who designed them early in the pandemic: Richard Corsi, the dean of engineering at the University of California, Davis, and Jim Rosenthal. Multiple peer-reviewed studies show that the boxes can work just as well as, if not better than, many commercial HEPA filters, often at roughly a third of the cost.
Undergraduate students at the University of Connecticut built C-R boxes for less than $65 per unit, Marina Creed and Kristina Wagstrom, researchers at the university, told me. And in the Red Rock school district in Arizona, middle schoolers built the boxes, said Megan Jehn, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Arizona State University.
In contrast, New York City public schools, in addition to installing MERV-13 filters in HVAC systems and improving ventilation, bought more than 160,000 devices made by a company called Intellipure that were sold by a company called Delos Living. Gothamist reported that Delos Living paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for a firm to lobby city officials to buy the devices.
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Many scientists I spoke with were especially angry about another category of air cleaners widely sold to schools: additive air cleaning devices, some of which can introduce potential pollutants to the air while neutralizing or inactivating pathogens. The scientists say that their safety and effectiveness had not been studied enough, especially under real-life conditions, and that they are insufficiently regulated.
One chemical produced by many additive air cleaners is ozone, a lung irritant that is harmful to inhale, especially as concentrations go up. California strongly warns consumers not to use such devices. While many devices comply with an E.P.A. or California State standard that ensures ozone generation stays below a certain level under lab conditions, many scientists told me that is not sufficient to ensure safety in real-life conditions, especially in small spaces where such pollutant byproducts can accumulate over time.
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The E.P.A. warns that “ozone generating air cleaners can produce levels of this lung irritant significantly above levels thought harmful to human health” and notes “no controlled studies have confirmed” ion generators’ purported benefits. The E.P.A. also says needlepoint bipolar ionization, another type of additive air cleaning, “is an emerging technology, and little research is available that evaluates it outside of lab conditions” and warns about its potential to generate harmful byproducts indoors.
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When I asked district officials why they picked these products, they mentioned the company’s talking points, such as that HEPA and MERV-13 filters are passive, that it’s better for purifying to be active and that with HEPA and MERV-13 filters, the pathogens are not neutralized and are merely trapped in the filter.
Despite these concerns, guidelines from federal agencies do not clearly and emphatically tell school officials to skip expensive, unproven and potentially unsafe methods.
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When I asked why guidelines had not been stronger earlier, representatives for the C.D.C., the E.P.A. and the Department of Education pointed out that they reached out to schools in webinars and opened up hotlines for them to ask questions, but they said that their agencies lacked the legal authority to recommend particular devices over others because of lack of regulatory authority.
In one frank conversation, a frustrated government official who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the controversy listed various outreach efforts to schools and states to try to steer them toward better choices but admitted that fell short of what was necessary and conceded that these companies had “out-hustled” the government.
From the Gothamist article:
According to multiple people familiar with the Delos contract, one pivotal factor in procurement decisions early in the pandemic was whether a company could provide enough of whatever product the city needed in a short amount of time. The New York City school system comprises approximately 1,300 school buildings, each with dozens of classrooms. Many of the emails obtained by Gothamist between Delos Living and city officials are focused on the number of units the company could deliver quickly.
“Every decision was primarily driven by supply,” said one person familiar with the contract. “It was very hard to get things. And even when things seemed to be available, there were shipping issues and stuff like that. So especially when you’re trying to equip schools, you get what you can within the time constraint. I can’t tell you there were a ton of options.”
(The New York Times link is very long because it’s a gift link I got off Twitter.)
From Zeynep Tufekci’s column:
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From the Gothamist article:
(The New York Times link is very long because it’s a gift link I got off Twitter.)