November 27, 2024 • 19 mins
The COVID-19 pandemic put the importance of indoor air quality in stark relief. The air in schools was of particular concern, and that concern spurred collaboration between researchers and school staff to find interventions to improve air quality to safeguard the health of students and staff. Data from indoor air monitors revealed that filter-based portable air cleaners were effective at removing airborne particulates. Ongoing research and monitoring will determine whether this effort is making a beneficial health impact and will be used to decide how to manage indoor air quality going forward. C&EN Uncovered, a project from C&EN’s podcast, Stereo Chemistry, offers a deeper look at subjects from recent stories. Check out the full story about air quality monitoring in schools at cenm.ag/airqualityinschools.
Cover photo: Undergraduate student Ricardo Reyes collects air quality measurements from the back of a classroom in Colorado.
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A transcript of this episode will be available soon at cen.acs.org.
Credits
Executive producer: David Anderson
C&EN Uncovered host: Craig Bettenhausen
Reporter: Fionna Samuels
Audio editor: Ted Woods
Copyeditor: Brian Vickers
Episode artwork: Glenn Asakawa/University of Colorado Boulder
Music: “Hot Chocolate,” by Aves
Contact Stereo Chemistry: Contact us on social media at @cenmag or email cenfeedback@acs.org.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Craig Bettenhausen (00:00):
Craig, welcome to CNN uncovered. I'm
(00:02):
Craig Bettenhausen. CNNuncovered is a podcast series
from stereo chemistry. In eachepisode, we'll take another look
at a recent cover story inchemical and Engineering News
and hear from CNN reportersabout striking moments from the
reporting, their biggesttakeaways and what got left on
the cutting room floor at thebeginning of the COVID 19
pandemic. One of the chiefconcerns was how to get children
back in schools safely oncehealth officials publicly
(00:25):
accepted that the virus wasprimarily transmitted through
the air, schools made concertedefforts to monitor and improve
the air quality in theirclassrooms to make them safe for
students. In a story thatappeared in the September 2
print issue of CE and today'sguest looked at ongoing programs
in Colorado and Massachusettsdesigned to help schools
identify, monitor and mitigateair quality issues in their
(00:47):
classrooms. We'll put a link tothe story in today's show notes.
I'm here with CNN assistanteditor Fiona Samuels, who wrote
the article. Hello, Fiona, Hi.Thanks for having me. So for
anyone that hasn't had a chanceto read the story yet, can you
give a brief recap of what's inthe article?
Fionna Samuels (01:06):
Essentially, I talked to two researchers who
are continuing to do indoor airquality monitoring programs with
schools in Colorado and Boston,Massachusetts, and then sort of
tied it all together with alittle bit about the ongoing
sorts of pushing for regulationsthat's happening across the
(01:26):
country,
Craig Bettenhausen (01:27):
and what attracted you to this as a story
topic,
Fionna Samuels (01:30):
I think that I, like many other people, got very
concerned about the indoor airquality around me during the
COVID pandemic, and I knew thatMark Hernandez, one of the
researchers that I talked to,started working with schools
during the COVID 19 pandemic,and I was really interested in
following up and seeing wherethat research was now. And it
(01:52):
turned out that they basicallyhave finished installing indoor
air quality monitors acrossColorado, and now they're really
digging into how indoor airquality might be affecting
absenteeism. And from him, Ilearned that there's other
programs in other places in thecountry, like the one in Boston,
(02:13):
which sort of led me on to talkto Patricia Fabien. And then
again, I wanted to know what thestate of regulation was, which
is when I talked to the EPAfolks. So the
Craig Bettenhausen (02:24):
COVID 19 pandemic was the catalyst for
all this monitoring. How hasthat evolved now that we're
settling into something like anew normal?
Fionna Samuels (02:33):
The major point is just because COVID 19 sort of
put a focus on indoor airquality, that doesn't mean that
indoor air quality has improvedsince then. Indoor air quality
has always been important, andit's just that the pandemic sort
of spotlighted that importancefor the general public. Now I
(02:53):
feel like the focus has reallyshifted towards sort of the idea
that indoor air quality moregenerally is important to
monitor and improve, rather thansort of hyper fixating on COVID
specifically.
Craig Bettenhausen (03:10):
So what steps did schools take to
improve air quality in theclassroom? In
Fionna Samuels (03:14):
Colorado, across the state, schools have
installed HEPA filters, portableHEPA filters, as well as indoor
air quality monitors. And thenin Boston, specifically, in that
one school district, schoolshave done the same thing. And
this is not unique to Coloradoor Boston. There are other
schools in the country who areinstalling or the districts are
(03:36):
installing, air quality monitorsand HEPA filters. One thing that
didn't make it into the storywas that in the middle of the
pandemic, at the height of thepandemic, schools had a lot of
funding to improve indoor airquality, and what ended up
happening is that companies soldindoor air purifiers that were
(03:59):
not actually effective. There'sbeen some litigation surrounding
that sort of exchange of moneyfor ineffective indoor air
purifiers, but HEPA filters dowork. HEPA filters and
ventilation are the two bigtrends. So just getting the air
that's inside out and exchanginginside air for outside air if
(04:21):
the outside air is clean.
Craig Bettenhausen (04:23):
So Mark Hernandez's team in Colorado set
up monitoring systems with theair purifiers. What were they
measuring? Exactly?
Fionna Samuels (04:31):
In Colorado, they measure temperature,
humidity, VOCs, carbon dioxideand particulate matter, but they
have measured particulate matterin two sizes. They do pm 2.5 and
pm 10. So that's particulatematter that is smaller than 2.5
micrometers in diameter, andparticles that are smaller than
(04:53):
10 micrometers in diameter,those have slightly different
health effects, but both of themare not good for you,
Craig Bettenhausen (04:59):
for vs. These again, where do these
pollutants come from? Especiallyin the home,
Fionna Samuels (05:04):
vocs can come from a lot of places. It's
actually very interesting and areally broad area of research
for indoor air chemistry. Vocscome off your skin. They come
off of your cleaning products.So anything that smells that's
like a voc. So if you have areally pungent perfume. That's a
voc. I had some friends who wereatmospheric chemists, and they
(05:29):
were doing some indoor airquality monitoring at Colorado
State University. One of theresearchers had to be told to
stop wearing such pungentsunscreen, because the sunscreen
was showing up in their data.Easy answer is, anything that
smells is probably a voc. Notall of them are, you know,
terrible for you, obviously.
Craig Bettenhausen (05:50):
As a side note, when I was reading the
story, I loved coming across theterm DAB pens and see any you
know, cannabis is becoming moremainstream every year, but it's
still surreal for me to hearthat sort of thing discussed
openly. Well, that
Fionna Samuels (06:04):
was something that Mark said. He said that
they can always see when thestudents are smoking anything,
and I guess students orteachers, when anyone is smoking
anything in the building thatshows up. So I guess, don't
smoke around indoor airmonitors. You're trying to be
(06:25):
sneaky.
Craig Bettenhausen (06:29):
So what are the negative consequences that
can arise from from not doing agood job at this, from not
having good air quality?
Fionna Samuels (06:35):
There's a lot. I mean, the obvious one is
increasing respiratory disease.We all experienced that with
COVID. I guess one thing that isimportant to highlight with this
is that there's not so manystandards yet. So, for example,
there's not a standard for whatbad levels of CO two means
there's not a number. Butsomething that Patricia Fabian
(06:59):
brought up was that during thepandemic, there was this idea
that 1000 ppm of CO two so 1000parts per million of carbon
dioxide, meant that you weremore likely to get COVID. But
that doesn't totally make sense,because if you're standing next
to someone with COVID, you'reprobably going to catch it,
regardless of what theconcentration of carbon dioxide
(07:21):
is when we're talking about,like, what are the negative
consequences of bad indoor air?There's not enough research at
this point, really, to sayanything more than you know, you
don't want to be in a spacewhere there's a bunch of virus
particles. You don't want to bein a space where there's
(07:41):
potential carcinogens that arefloating around in the air. You
don't want to be in a spacethat's full of smoke or
particulate matter that can getdown in your lungs and cause
pulmonary issues. But beyondthat, there's not a lot of
concrete numbers. Can't say it'ssafe to be in a space that's
(08:02):
less than 100 or 1000 ppm of COtwo, right?
Craig Bettenhausen (08:07):
So we've talked a fair amount about
Colorado already, but you alsotalked to folks in Boston. How
is the program different there,and what's the status?
Fionna Samuels (08:15):
The biggest difference is that the general
public can actually access allof the air quality monitoring
data in Boston, whereas inColorado, as far as I can tell,
that's sort of privately heldfor the schools to access, but
not necessarily the public. Theother thing is that Boston
doesn't measure VOCs. Theymeasure carbon monoxide, and the
(08:38):
reason they measure carbonmonoxide it's just because
that's a super dangerous gas.But other than that, they're
very similar. You know, theresearchers are trying to help
interpret data for the schooldistricts, and in both cases,
there's a really big push toinform the school districts
before potentially informing thepublic. For Boston Public
(09:01):
Schools, you can go and see howthe indoor air is in every
single school in that district.
Craig Bettenhausen (09:08):
Yeah, the transparency is really
interesting, a plug for yourstory. Again, at the bottom, you
have a link to this tool, andyou can, just like, zoom right
in. It's a map, and it has thenumbers right there in Boston,
in Boston, yeah, at the sametime, raw data can be scary,
especially for parents thatmight not have a scientific
background. How good a job arethe schools doing at putting the
(09:30):
context out with the data?
Fionna Samuels (09:32):
The point is that this resource is there so
that parents who are involvedcan sort of push the school to
act on it. It's a really goodresource for building managers.
But like you're saying, buildingmanagers are going to have to
have some level of understandingof how to read graphs, which
(09:54):
might be challenging, but Ithink that there is, I mean, the
scientists that I talk. To werevery enthusiastic about trying
to inform and help in any waythey could in terms of teaching
people how to use these tools,people being the school
administrators, the buildingmanagers and everyone who's sort
of involved in keeping thebuilding safe.
Craig Bettenhausen (10:19):
So what has been the overall effect of the
Purifiers in the Colorado pilotprogram? The
Fionna Samuels (10:25):
overall effect of the Purifiers seems to be
that they very effectivelyremove particulate matter. And
there's a there's a significantdifference before and after the
Purifiers are used. Moreimportantly, again, is the
ventilation the indoor airpurifiers are an important
aspect of the story, butprobably the more important
(10:47):
piece is the monitoring, becausewith the monitoring, Mark and
Patricia can both say prettyconfidently that ventilation
makes a difference, or Thispurifier is making a difference.
Without the monitoring, we wouldhave no idea. My sort of
interpretation is that, yes, thetechnologies to clean the air
(11:10):
are good and helpful, but moreimportant is to monitor
everything so that you canactually see if they're good and
helpful, rather than not good.
Craig Bettenhausen (11:22):
So another person in your story is Patricia
Fabian at Boston University. Canyou talk about their work?
Fionna Samuels (11:28):
So Boston Public School District installed a
bunch of monitors in theirschools, as well as filters, and
Patricia saw in a news articlesomewhere that all of this
monitoring was happening and shereally wanted to get involved in
analyzing that data. And so herwhole focus is taking the data
from the monitors and basicallydigesting it into something that
(11:54):
is able to be used by theschools and the administrators,
building managers, whomever, tobasically get more funding to
address specific problems atthose schools and to identify
the problem areas so that thingscan be fixed in a way that makes
the most sense, basicallytriaging the worst case rooms
(12:17):
first, rather than focusing onones that are fine. Yeah,
Craig Bettenhausen (12:21):
that's an interesting nuance in your story
to talk about how even withinthe same school building,
sometimes there were oneclassroom that was great in one
classroom that was in a realrough state. So
Fionna Samuels (12:31):
that variability is why she thinks that it's
really important to put amonitor into every single
classroom and every singlereally important space so they
have it in the nurse's officeand the administrative offices.
In Colorado, they don't put themin every single classroom, but
in both cases, you can seevariability based on what
Patricia was saying. Like youcan literally see one classroom
(12:54):
is much warmer than theclassroom next door.
Craig Bettenhausen (12:58):
So when I think of air quality, one of the
first entities I think about, isthe EPA, but the EPA hasn't been
able to step in yet. Why isthat?
Fionna Samuels (13:06):
They don't have any regulatory power in indoor
spaces. So we have the Clean Airacts for outdoor spaces, where
the EPA can do some regulating,but there's no sorts of
regulatory power for indoorspaces. And I mean, I would
assume it's because indoor isconsidered private. I see that
(13:29):
might change, though, yeah,
Craig Bettenhausen (13:30):
I was gonna say because your article
mentioned that there's somelegislation in the works that
could change, that the
Fionna Samuels (13:35):
legislation that's in the works is basically
focusing on trying to basicallyenable regulatory bodies to get
into public spaces and dosomething about the indoor air
quality in public buildings.
Craig Bettenhausen (13:49):
So there would be a new law that would
give the EPA authority in thatspace.
Fionna Samuels (13:53):
Yeah, so the law actually will give the EPA an
ability to get into those indoorspaces and have a say about what
is considered good or bad air,and they have some pollutants
that are on the list that needto be monitored. And the bill
will also allow the EPA to addmore pollutants as more
(14:14):
information and data areacquired by scientists, and
Craig Bettenhausen (14:18):
that's at the federal level. Is there a
bill name you can point us to?Yes.
Fionna Samuels (14:23):
So the bill is called the indoor air quality
and Healthy Schools Act of 2024,and it was introduced by
Congressman Paul Tonko of NewYork and Brian Fitzpatrick of
Pennsylvania. It seems likesomething that aligns with what
a lot of the indoor airscientists are hoping to
Craig Bettenhausen (14:44):
see. So from a very practical sense, what
resources are available now toschools that want to improve
their ventilation andpurification systems.
Fionna Samuels (14:52):
So right now, there are still potentially
unspent ESS er grants from when.And the Biden Harris
administration was fundingschools, specifically elementary
and secondary schools, to reopenduring COVID In addition to
that, there's the inflationReduction Act, and also the
(15:13):
White House has this thingcalled the clean air and
Buildings Challenge, which alsohas some funding resources. And
the EPA has been funding a lotfor scientists who want to get
involved in helping learn moreabout indoor air quality, but
that's sort of a separate thingthan schools. Yeah,
Craig Bettenhausen (15:34):
so this is going to be hard to answer,
because schools come intodifferent sizes, but I wonder if
you could give a sense of thecosts that an average sized
school would be looking at tooverhaul their ventilation
system. What does it cost toreally fix these problems in a
normal school building?
Fionna Samuels (15:53):
It can cost a lot to fix the ventilation or to
fully replace the ventilation.That can be a very significant
amount of money, like $10,000 orsomething, something Mark
Hernandez was very adamant aboutwas the fact that when you break
down the cost of installingindoor air quality monitors and
(16:14):
the short term solution of theseHEPA filter based air cleaners,
it breaks down to about the costof a cup of coffee every day per
student, because there are somany students that if you
consider every student, you kindof disperse the cost across a
lot of young people. So I mean,it seems like it would be worth
(16:37):
it, and especially if you canuse the grants that are
available from the federalgovernment to sort of subsidize
or to cover those costs.Slightly
Craig Bettenhausen (16:49):
distracted by the idea someone clipping out
that one audio clip and havingFiona endorses a cup of coffee
for every student.
Fionna Samuels (16:57):
Every student should have a cup of coffee. I'm
terrified
Craig Bettenhausen (17:01):
of what would happen if you put some of
these air quality monitors,especially for VOCs, in a
chemistry lab. Speaking of otherspaces that might give you
unpleasant results, yeah,
Fionna Samuels (17:10):
I would be worried about that too. I mean,
I think that that's and thatwindows don't open, usually the
windows don't open, some of thevent hoods don't work. It's
probably even more important tobe monitoring those spaces. I
guess that's true, especiallywhen you don't know the kinds of
things that are going to end upin the air depending on the
reactions that you're runningagain. While this story focused
(17:34):
on schools specifically, it'snot unique to schools, so
installing indoor air qualitymonitors is something that,
especially Mark Hernandezthinks, is something that we
should be doing across the boardin all public spaces, just
because information is power wespend, you know, a huge amount
(17:54):
of our life in buildings. We'reconstantly at the ACS office
right the other day, I wassmelling lemongrass in the
hallway, and I had no idea whereit was coming from. So it would
perhaps be nice to be able tolook at a dashboard and say,
like, okay, even though I smellthis weird thing right now, I
can tell that we've got enoughventilation that the air
(18:18):
exchange rate is high enough toprotect me from any sort of bad
pollutant, or offer some measureof protection against bad
pollutants. Monitoring is power,and that's kind of the overall
point, beyond just schoolsFiona, thanks
Craig Bettenhausen (18:38):
for diving deep with us on this. You're so
welcome. So listeners can findme on social media as at Craig
of waffles. How can listenersget a hold of you? My
Fionna Samuels (18:48):
email is on the CNN directory, which is totally
open to anybody. Anybody canemail.
Craig Bettenhausen (18:57):
So you can find Fiona's cover story about
air quality in schools, on CNNswebsite, or in the September 2
print issue of Cen we put a linkin the show notes along with the
episode credits. We'd love toknow what you think of CNN
uncovered. You can share yourfeedback with us by emailing
cenfeedback@acs.org This hasbeen cn uncovered, a series from
cn stereo chemistry. Stereochemistry is the official
(19:20):
podcast of chemical andEngineering News. Chemical
Engineering News is anindependent news outlet
published by the AmericanChemical Society. Thanks for
listening. You.
Craig, welcome to CNN uncovered. I'm
(00:02):
Craig Bettenhausen. CNNuncovered is a podcast series
from stereo chemistry. In eachepisode, we'll take another look
at a recent cover story inchemical and Engineering News
and hear from CNN reportersabout striking moments from the
reporting, their biggesttakeaways and what got left on
the cutting room floor at thebeginning of the COVID 19
pandemic. One of the chiefconcerns was how to get children
back in schools safely oncehealth officials publicly
(00:25):
accepted that the virus wasprimarily transmitted through
the air, schools made concertedefforts to monitor and improve
the air quality in theirclassrooms to make them safe for
students. In a story thatappeared in the September 2
print issue of CE and today'sguest looked at ongoing programs
in Colorado and Massachusettsdesigned to help schools
identify, monitor and mitigateair quality issues in their
(00:47):
classrooms. We'll put a link tothe story in today's show notes.
I'm here with CNN assistanteditor Fiona Samuels, who wrote
the article. Hello, Fiona, Hi.Thanks for having me. So for
anyone that hasn't had a chanceto read the story yet, can you
give a brief recap of what's inthe article?
Fionna Samuels (01:06):
Essentially, I talked to two researchers who
are continuing to do indoor airquality monitoring programs with
schools in Colorado and Boston,Massachusetts, and then sort of
tied it all together with alittle bit about the ongoing
sorts of pushing for regulationsthat's happening across the
(01:26):
country,
Craig Bettenhausen (01:27):
and what attracted you to this as a story
topic,
Fionna Samuels (01:30):
I think that I, like many other people, got very
concerned about the indoor airquality around me during the
COVID pandemic, and I knew thatMark Hernandez, one of the
researchers that I talked to,started working with schools
during the COVID 19 pandemic,and I was really interested in
following up and seeing wherethat research was now. And it
(01:52):
turned out that they basicallyhave finished installing indoor
air quality monitors acrossColorado, and now they're really
digging into how indoor airquality might be affecting
absenteeism. And from him, Ilearned that there's other
programs in other places in thecountry, like the one in Boston,
(02:13):
which sort of led me on to talkto Patricia Fabien. And then
again, I wanted to know what thestate of regulation was, which
is when I talked to the EPAfolks. So the
Craig Bettenhausen (02:24):
COVID 19 pandemic was the catalyst for
all this monitoring. How hasthat evolved now that we're
settling into something like anew normal?
Fionna Samuels (02:33):
The major point is just because COVID 19 sort of
put a focus on indoor airquality, that doesn't mean that
indoor air quality has improvedsince then. Indoor air quality
has always been important, andit's just that the pandemic sort
of spotlighted that importancefor the general public. Now I
(02:53):
feel like the focus has reallyshifted towards sort of the idea
that indoor air quality moregenerally is important to
monitor and improve, rather thansort of hyper fixating on COVID
specifically.
Craig Bettenhausen (03:10):
So what steps did schools take to
improve air quality in theclassroom? In
Fionna Samuels (03:14):
Colorado, across the state, schools have
installed HEPA filters, portableHEPA filters, as well as indoor
air quality monitors. And thenin Boston, specifically, in that
one school district, schoolshave done the same thing. And
this is not unique to Coloradoor Boston. There are other
schools in the country who areinstalling or the districts are
(03:36):
installing, air quality monitorsand HEPA filters. One thing that
didn't make it into the storywas that in the middle of the
pandemic, at the height of thepandemic, schools had a lot of
funding to improve indoor airquality, and what ended up
happening is that companies soldindoor air purifiers that were
(03:59):
not actually effective. There'sbeen some litigation surrounding
that sort of exchange of moneyfor ineffective indoor air
purifiers, but HEPA filters dowork. HEPA filters and
ventilation are the two bigtrends. So just getting the air
that's inside out and exchanginginside air for outside air if
(04:21):
the outside air is clean.
Craig Bettenhausen (04:23):
So Mark Hernandez's team in Colorado set
up monitoring systems with theair purifiers. What were they
measuring? Exactly?
Fionna Samuels (04:31):
In Colorado, they measure temperature,
humidity, VOCs, carbon dioxideand particulate matter, but they
have measured particulate matterin two sizes. They do pm 2.5 and
pm 10. So that's particulatematter that is smaller than 2.5
micrometers in diameter, andparticles that are smaller than
(04:53):
10 micrometers in diameter,those have slightly different
health effects, but both of themare not good for you,
Craig Bettenhausen (04:59):
for vs. These again, where do these
pollutants come from? Especiallyin the home,
Fionna Samuels (05:04):
vocs can come from a lot of places. It's
actually very interesting and areally broad area of research
for indoor air chemistry. Vocscome off your skin. They come
off of your cleaning products.So anything that smells that's
like a voc. So if you have areally pungent perfume. That's a
voc. I had some friends who wereatmospheric chemists, and they
(05:29):
were doing some indoor airquality monitoring at Colorado
State University. One of theresearchers had to be told to
stop wearing such pungentsunscreen, because the sunscreen
was showing up in their data.Easy answer is, anything that
smells is probably a voc. Notall of them are, you know,
terrible for you, obviously.
Craig Bettenhausen (05:50):
As a side note, when I was reading the
story, I loved coming across theterm DAB pens and see any you
know, cannabis is becoming moremainstream every year, but it's
still surreal for me to hearthat sort of thing discussed
openly. Well, that
Fionna Samuels (06:04):
was something that Mark said. He said that
they can always see when thestudents are smoking anything,
and I guess students orteachers, when anyone is smoking
anything in the building thatshows up. So I guess, don't
smoke around indoor airmonitors. You're trying to be
(06:25):
sneaky.
Craig Bettenhausen (06:29):
So what are the negative consequences that
can arise from from not doing agood job at this, from not
having good air quality?
Fionna Samuels (06:35):
There's a lot. I mean, the obvious one is
increasing respiratory disease.We all experienced that with
COVID. I guess one thing that isimportant to highlight with this
is that there's not so manystandards yet. So, for example,
there's not a standard for whatbad levels of CO two means
there's not a number. Butsomething that Patricia Fabian
(06:59):
brought up was that during thepandemic, there was this idea
that 1000 ppm of CO two so 1000parts per million of carbon
dioxide, meant that you weremore likely to get COVID. But
that doesn't totally make sense,because if you're standing next
to someone with COVID, you'reprobably going to catch it,
regardless of what theconcentration of carbon dioxide
(07:21):
is when we're talking about,like, what are the negative
consequences of bad indoor air?There's not enough research at
this point, really, to sayanything more than you know, you
don't want to be in a spacewhere there's a bunch of virus
particles. You don't want to bein a space where there's
(07:41):
potential carcinogens that arefloating around in the air. You
don't want to be in a spacethat's full of smoke or
particulate matter that can getdown in your lungs and cause
pulmonary issues. But beyondthat, there's not a lot of
concrete numbers. Can't say it'ssafe to be in a space that's
(08:02):
less than 100 or 1000 ppm of COtwo, right?
Craig Bettenhausen (08:07):
So we've talked a fair amount about
Colorado already, but you alsotalked to folks in Boston. How
is the program different there,and what's the status?
Fionna Samuels (08:15):
The biggest difference is that the general
public can actually access allof the air quality monitoring
data in Boston, whereas inColorado, as far as I can tell,
that's sort of privately heldfor the schools to access, but
not necessarily the public. Theother thing is that Boston
doesn't measure VOCs. Theymeasure carbon monoxide, and the
(08:38):
reason they measure carbonmonoxide it's just because
that's a super dangerous gas.But other than that, they're
very similar. You know, theresearchers are trying to help
interpret data for the schooldistricts, and in both cases,
there's a really big push toinform the school districts
before potentially informing thepublic. For Boston Public
(09:01):
Schools, you can go and see howthe indoor air is in every
single school in that district.
Craig Bettenhausen (09:08):
Yeah, the transparency is really
interesting, a plug for yourstory. Again, at the bottom, you
have a link to this tool, andyou can, just like, zoom right
in. It's a map, and it has thenumbers right there in Boston,
in Boston, yeah, at the sametime, raw data can be scary,
especially for parents thatmight not have a scientific
background. How good a job arethe schools doing at putting the
(09:30):
context out with the data?
Fionna Samuels (09:32):
The point is that this resource is there so
that parents who are involvedcan sort of push the school to
act on it. It's a really goodresource for building managers.
But like you're saying, buildingmanagers are going to have to
have some level of understandingof how to read graphs, which
(09:54):
might be challenging, but Ithink that there is, I mean, the
scientists that I talk. To werevery enthusiastic about trying
to inform and help in any waythey could in terms of teaching
people how to use these tools,people being the school
administrators, the buildingmanagers and everyone who's sort
of involved in keeping thebuilding safe.
Craig Bettenhausen (10:19):
So what has been the overall effect of the
Purifiers in the Colorado pilotprogram? The
Fionna Samuels (10:25):
overall effect of the Purifiers seems to be
that they very effectivelyremove particulate matter. And
there's a there's a significantdifference before and after the
Purifiers are used. Moreimportantly, again, is the
ventilation the indoor airpurifiers are an important
aspect of the story, butprobably the more important
(10:47):
piece is the monitoring, becausewith the monitoring, Mark and
Patricia can both say prettyconfidently that ventilation
makes a difference, or Thispurifier is making a difference.
Without the monitoring, we wouldhave no idea. My sort of
interpretation is that, yes, thetechnologies to clean the air
(11:10):
are good and helpful, but moreimportant is to monitor
everything so that you canactually see if they're good and
helpful, rather than not good.
Craig Bettenhausen (11:22):
So another person in your story is Patricia
Fabian at Boston University. Canyou talk about their work?
Fionna Samuels (11:28):
So Boston Public School District installed a
bunch of monitors in theirschools, as well as filters, and
Patricia saw in a news articlesomewhere that all of this
monitoring was happening and shereally wanted to get involved in
analyzing that data. And so herwhole focus is taking the data
from the monitors and basicallydigesting it into something that
(11:54):
is able to be used by theschools and the administrators,
building managers, whomever, tobasically get more funding to
address specific problems atthose schools and to identify
the problem areas so that thingscan be fixed in a way that makes
the most sense, basicallytriaging the worst case rooms
(12:17):
first, rather than focusing onones that are fine. Yeah,
Craig Bettenhausen (12:21):
that's an interesting nuance in your story
to talk about how even withinthe same school building,
sometimes there were oneclassroom that was great in one
classroom that was in a realrough state. So
Fionna Samuels (12:31):
that variability is why she thinks that it's
really important to put amonitor into every single
classroom and every singlereally important space so they
have it in the nurse's officeand the administrative offices.
In Colorado, they don't put themin every single classroom, but
in both cases, you can seevariability based on what
Patricia was saying. Like youcan literally see one classroom
(12:54):
is much warmer than theclassroom next door.
Craig Bettenhausen (12:58):
So when I think of air quality, one of the
first entities I think about, isthe EPA, but the EPA hasn't been
able to step in yet. Why isthat?
Fionna Samuels (13:06):
They don't have any regulatory power in indoor
spaces. So we have the Clean Airacts for outdoor spaces, where
the EPA can do some regulating,but there's no sorts of
regulatory power for indoorspaces. And I mean, I would
assume it's because indoor isconsidered private. I see that
(13:29):
might change, though, yeah,
Craig Bettenhausen (13:30):
I was gonna say because your article
mentioned that there's somelegislation in the works that
could change, that the
Fionna Samuels (13:35):
legislation that's in the works is basically
focusing on trying to basicallyenable regulatory bodies to get
into public spaces and dosomething about the indoor air
quality in public buildings.
Craig Bettenhausen (13:49):
So there would be a new law that would
give the EPA authority in thatspace.
Fionna Samuels (13:53):
Yeah, so the law actually will give the EPA an
ability to get into those indoorspaces and have a say about what
is considered good or bad air,and they have some pollutants
that are on the list that needto be monitored. And the bill
will also allow the EPA to addmore pollutants as more
(14:14):
information and data areacquired by scientists, and
Craig Bettenhausen (14:18):
that's at the federal level. Is there a
bill name you can point us to?Yes.
Fionna Samuels (14:23):
So the bill is called the indoor air quality
and Healthy Schools Act of 2024,and it was introduced by
Congressman Paul Tonko of NewYork and Brian Fitzpatrick of
Pennsylvania. It seems likesomething that aligns with what
a lot of the indoor airscientists are hoping to
Craig Bettenhausen (14:44):
see. So from a very practical sense, what
resources are available now toschools that want to improve
their ventilation andpurification systems.
Fionna Samuels (14:52):
So right now, there are still potentially
unspent ESS er grants from when.And the Biden Harris
administration was fundingschools, specifically elementary
and secondary schools, to reopenduring COVID In addition to
that, there's the inflationReduction Act, and also the
(15:13):
White House has this thingcalled the clean air and
Buildings Challenge, which alsohas some funding resources. And
the EPA has been funding a lotfor scientists who want to get
involved in helping learn moreabout indoor air quality, but
that's sort of a separate thingthan schools. Yeah,
Craig Bettenhausen (15:34):
so this is going to be hard to answer,
because schools come intodifferent sizes, but I wonder if
you could give a sense of thecosts that an average sized
school would be looking at tooverhaul their ventilation
system. What does it cost toreally fix these problems in a
normal school building?
Fionna Samuels (15:53):
It can cost a lot to fix the ventilation or to
fully replace the ventilation.That can be a very significant
amount of money, like $10,000 orsomething, something Mark
Hernandez was very adamant aboutwas the fact that when you break
down the cost of installingindoor air quality monitors and
(16:14):
the short term solution of theseHEPA filter based air cleaners,
it breaks down to about the costof a cup of coffee every day per
student, because there are somany students that if you
consider every student, you kindof disperse the cost across a
lot of young people. So I mean,it seems like it would be worth
(16:37):
it, and especially if you canuse the grants that are
available from the federalgovernment to sort of subsidize
or to cover those costs.Slightly
Craig Bettenhausen (16:49):
distracted by the idea someone clipping out
that one audio clip and havingFiona endorses a cup of coffee
for every student.
Fionna Samuels (16:57):
Every student should have a cup of coffee. I'm
terrified
Craig Bettenhausen (17:01):
of what would happen if you put some of
these air quality monitors,especially for VOCs, in a
chemistry lab. Speaking of otherspaces that might give you
unpleasant results, yeah,
Fionna Samuels (17:10):
I would be worried about that too. I mean,
I think that that's and thatwindows don't open, usually the
windows don't open, some of thevent hoods don't work. It's
probably even more important tobe monitoring those spaces. I
guess that's true, especiallywhen you don't know the kinds of
things that are going to end upin the air depending on the
reactions that you're runningagain. While this story focused
(17:34):
on schools specifically, it'snot unique to schools, so
installing indoor air qualitymonitors is something that,
especially Mark Hernandezthinks, is something that we
should be doing across the boardin all public spaces, just
because information is power wespend, you know, a huge amount
(17:54):
of our life in buildings. We'reconstantly at the ACS office
right the other day, I wassmelling lemongrass in the
hallway, and I had no idea whereit was coming from. So it would
perhaps be nice to be able tolook at a dashboard and say,
like, okay, even though I smellthis weird thing right now, I
can tell that we've got enoughventilation that the air
(18:18):
exchange rate is high enough toprotect me from any sort of bad
pollutant, or offer some measureof protection against bad
pollutants. Monitoring is power,and that's kind of the overall
point, beyond just schoolsFiona, thanks
Craig Bettenhausen (18:38):
for diving deep with us on this. You're so
welcome. So listeners can findme on social media as at Craig
of waffles. How can listenersget a hold of you? My
Fionna Samuels (18:48):
email is on the CNN directory, which is totally
open to anybody. Anybody canemail.
Craig Bettenhausen (18:57):
So you can find Fiona's cover story about
air quality in schools, on CNNswebsite, or in the September 2
print issue of Cen we put a linkin the show notes along with the
episode credits. We'd love toknow what you think of CNN
uncovered. You can share yourfeedback with us by emailing
cenfeedback@acs.org This hasbeen cn uncovered, a series from
cn stereo chemistry. Stereochemistry is the official
(19:20):
podcast of chemical andEngineering News. Chemical
Engineering News is anindependent news outlet
published by the AmericanChemical Society. Thanks for
listening. You.
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