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C&EN Uncovered: Indoor air monitoring goes to school · Stereo Chemistry

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  Craig Bettenhausen: Craig, welcome to CNN uncovered. I'm
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  Craig Bettenhausen. CNN uncovered is a podcast series
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  from stereo chemistry. In each episode, we'll take another look
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  at a recent cover story in chemical and Engineering News
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  and hear from CNN reporters about striking moments from the
• 0:14
  reporting, their biggest takeaways and what got left on
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  the cutting room floor at the beginning of the COVID 19
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  pandemic. One of the chief concerns was how to get children
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  back in schools safely once health officials publicly
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  accepted that the virus was primarily transmitted through
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  the air, schools made concerted efforts to monitor and improve
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  the air quality in their classrooms to make them safe for
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  students. In a story that appeared in the September 2
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  print issue of CE and today's guest looked at ongoing programs
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  in Colorado and Massachusetts designed to help schools
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  identify, monitor and mitigate air quality issues in their
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  classrooms. We'll put a link to the story in today's show notes.
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  I'm here with CNN assistant editor Fiona Samuels, who wrote
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  the article. Hello, Fiona, Hi. Thanks for having me. So for
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  anyone that hasn't had a chance to read the story yet, can you
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  give a brief recap of what's in the article?
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  Fionna Samuels: Essentially, I talked to two researchers who
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  are continuing to do indoor air quality monitoring programs with
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  schools in Colorado and Boston, Massachusetts, and then sort of
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  tied it all together with a little bit about the ongoing
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  sorts of pushing for regulations that's happening across the
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  country,
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  Craig Bettenhausen: and what attracted you to this as a story
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  topic,
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  Fionna Samuels: I think that I, like many other people, got very
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  concerned about the indoor air quality around me during the
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  COVID pandemic, and I knew that Mark Hernandez, one of the
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  researchers that I talked to, started working with schools
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  during the COVID 19 pandemic, and I was really interested in
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  following up and seeing where that research was now. And it
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  turned out that they basically have finished installing indoor
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  air quality monitors across Colorado, and now they're really
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  digging into how indoor air quality might be affecting
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  absenteeism. And from him, I learned that there's other
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  programs in other places in the country, like the one in Boston,
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  which sort of led me on to talk to Patricia Fabien. And then
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  again, I wanted to know what the state of regulation was, which
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  is when I talked to the EPA folks. So the
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  Craig Bettenhausen: COVID 19 pandemic was the catalyst for
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  all this monitoring. How has that evolved now that we're
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  settling into something like a new normal?
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  Fionna Samuels: The major point is just because COVID 19 sort of
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  put a focus on indoor air quality, that doesn't mean that
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  indoor air quality has improved since then. Indoor air quality
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  has always been important, and it's just that the pandemic sort
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  of spotlighted that importance for the general public. Now I
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  feel like the focus has really shifted towards sort of the idea
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  that indoor air quality more generally is important to
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  monitor and improve, rather than sort of hyper fixating on COVID
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  specifically.
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  Craig Bettenhausen: So what steps did schools take to
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  improve air quality in the classroom? In
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  Fionna Samuels: Colorado, across the state, schools have
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  installed HEPA filters, portable HEPA filters, as well as indoor
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  air quality monitors. And then in Boston, specifically, in that
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  one school district, schools have done the same thing. And
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  this is not unique to Colorado or Boston. There are other
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  schools in the country who are installing or the districts are
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  installing, air quality monitors and HEPA filters. One thing that
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  didn't make it into the story was that in the middle of the
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  pandemic, at the height of the pandemic, schools had a lot of
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  funding to improve indoor air quality, and what ended up
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  happening is that companies sold indoor air purifiers that were
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  not actually effective. There's been some litigation surrounding
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  that sort of exchange of money for ineffective indoor air
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  purifiers, but HEPA filters do work. HEPA filters and
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  ventilation are the two big trends. So just getting the air
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  that's inside out and exchanging inside air for outside air if
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  the outside air is clean.
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  Craig Bettenhausen: So Mark Hernandez's team in Colorado set
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  up monitoring systems with the air purifiers. What were they
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  measuring? Exactly?
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  Fionna Samuels: In Colorado, they measure temperature,
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  humidity, VOCs, carbon dioxide and particulate matter, but they
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  have measured particulate matter in two sizes. They do pm 2.5 and
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  pm 10. So that's particulate matter that is smaller than 2.5
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  micrometers in diameter, and particles that are smaller than
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  10 micrometers in diameter, those have slightly different
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  health effects, but both of them are not good for you,
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  Craig Bettenhausen: for vs. These again, where do these
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  pollutants come from? Especially in the home,
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  Fionna Samuels: vocs can come from a lot of places. It's
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  actually very interesting and a really broad area of research
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  for indoor air chemistry. Vocs come off your skin. They come
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  off of your cleaning products. So anything that smells that's
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  like a voc. So if you have a really pungent perfume. That's a
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  voc. I had some friends who were atmospheric chemists, and they
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  were doing some indoor air quality monitoring at Colorado
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  State University. One of the researchers had to be told to
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  stop wearing such pungent sunscreen, because the sunscreen
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  was showing up in their data. Easy answer is, anything that
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  smells is probably a voc. Not all of them are, you know,
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  terrible for you, obviously.
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  Craig Bettenhausen: As a side note, when I was reading the
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  story, I loved coming across the term DAB pens and see any you
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  know, cannabis is becoming more mainstream every year, but it's
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  still surreal for me to hear that sort of thing discussed
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  openly. Well, that
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  Fionna Samuels: was something that Mark said. He said that
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  they can always see when the students are smoking anything,
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  and I guess students or teachers, when anyone is smoking
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  anything in the building that shows up. So I guess, don't
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  smoke around indoor air monitors. You're trying to be
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  sneaky.
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  Craig Bettenhausen: So what are the negative consequences that
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  can arise from from not doing a good job at this, from not
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  having good air quality?
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  Fionna Samuels: There's a lot. I mean, the obvious one is
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  increasing respiratory disease. We all experienced that with
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  COVID. I guess one thing that is important to highlight with this
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  is that there's not so many standards yet. So, for example,
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  there's not a standard for what bad levels of CO two means
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  there's not a number. But something that Patricia Fabian
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  brought up was that during the pandemic, there was this idea
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  that 1000 ppm of CO two so 1000 parts per million of carbon
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  dioxide, meant that you were more likely to get COVID. But
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  that doesn't totally make sense, because if you're standing next
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  to someone with COVID, you're probably going to catch it,
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  regardless of what the concentration of carbon dioxide
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  is when we're talking about, like, what are the negative
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  consequences of bad indoor air? There's not enough research at
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  this point, really, to say anything more than you know, you
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  don't want to be in a space where there's a bunch of virus
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  particles. You don't want to be in a space where there's
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  potential carcinogens that are floating around in the air. You
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  don't want to be in a space that's full of smoke or
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  particulate matter that can get down in your lungs and cause
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  pulmonary issues. But beyond that, there's not a lot of
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  concrete numbers. Can't say it's safe to be in a space that's
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  less than 100 or 1000 ppm of CO two, right?
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  Craig Bettenhausen: So we've talked a fair amount about
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  Colorado already, but you also talked to folks in Boston. How
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  is the program different there, and what's the status?
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  Fionna Samuels: The biggest difference is that the general
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  public can actually access all of the air quality monitoring
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  data in Boston, whereas in Colorado, as far as I can tell,
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  that's sort of privately held for the schools to access, but
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  not necessarily the public. The other thing is that Boston
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  doesn't measure VOCs. They measure carbon monoxide, and the
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  reason they measure carbon monoxide it's just because
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  that's a super dangerous gas. But other than that, they're
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  very similar. You know, the researchers are trying to help
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  interpret data for the school districts, and in both cases,
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  there's a really big push to inform the school districts
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  before potentially informing the public. For Boston Public
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  Schools, you can go and see how the indoor air is in every
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  single school in that district.
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  Craig Bettenhausen: Yeah, the transparency is really
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  interesting, a plug for your story. Again, at the bottom, you
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  have a link to this tool, and you can, just like, zoom right
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  in. It's a map, and it has the numbers right there in Boston,
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  in Boston, yeah, at the same time, raw data can be scary,
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  especially for parents that might not have a scientific
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  background. How good a job are the schools doing at putting the
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  context out with the data?
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  Fionna Samuels: The point is that this resource is there so
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  that parents who are involved can sort of push the school to
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  act on it. It's a really good resource for building managers.
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  But like you're saying, building managers are going to have to
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  have some level of understanding of how to read graphs, which
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  might be challenging, but I think that there is, I mean, the
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  scientists that I talk. To were very enthusiastic about trying
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  to inform and help in any way they could in terms of teaching
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  people how to use these tools, people being the school
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  administrators, the building managers and everyone who's sort
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  of involved in keeping the building safe.
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  Craig Bettenhausen: So what has been the overall effect of the
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  Purifiers in the Colorado pilot program? The
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  Fionna Samuels: overall effect of the Purifiers seems to be
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  that they very effectively remove particulate matter. And
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  there's a there's a significant difference before and after the
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  Purifiers are used. More importantly, again, is the
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  ventilation the indoor air purifiers are an important
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  aspect of the story, but probably the more important
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  piece is the monitoring, because with the monitoring, Mark and
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  Patricia can both say pretty confidently that ventilation
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  makes a difference, or This purifier is making a difference.
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  Without the monitoring, we would have no idea. My sort of
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  interpretation is that, yes, the technologies to clean the air
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  are good and helpful, but more important is to monitor
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  everything so that you can actually see if they're good and
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  helpful, rather than not good.
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  Craig Bettenhausen: So another person in your story is Patricia
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  Fabian at Boston University. Can you talk about their work?
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  Fionna Samuels: So Boston Public School District installed a
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  bunch of monitors in their schools, as well as filters, and
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  Patricia saw in a news article somewhere that all of this
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  monitoring was happening and she really wanted to get involved in
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  analyzing that data. And so her whole focus is taking the data
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  from the monitors and basically digesting it into something that
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  is able to be used by the schools and the administrators,
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  building managers, whomever, to basically get more funding to
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  address specific problems at those schools and to identify
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  the problem areas so that things can be fixed in a way that makes
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  the most sense, basically triaging the worst case rooms
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  first, rather than focusing on ones that are fine. Yeah,
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  Craig Bettenhausen: that's an interesting nuance in your story
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  to talk about how even within the same school building,
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  sometimes there were one classroom that was great in one
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  classroom that was in a real rough state. So
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  Fionna Samuels: that variability is why she thinks that it's
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  really important to put a monitor into every single
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  classroom and every single really important space so they
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  have it in the nurse's office and the administrative offices.
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  In Colorado, they don't put them in every single classroom, but
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  in both cases, you can see variability based on what
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  Patricia was saying. Like you can literally see one classroom
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  is much warmer than the classroom next door.
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  Craig Bettenhausen: So when I think of air quality, one of the
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  first entities I think about, is the EPA, but the EPA hasn't been
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  able to step in yet. Why is that?
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  Fionna Samuels: They don't have any regulatory power in indoor
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  spaces. So we have the Clean Air acts for outdoor spaces, where
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  the EPA can do some regulating, but there's no sorts of
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  regulatory power for indoor spaces. And I mean, I would
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  assume it's because indoor is considered private. I see that
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  might change, though, yeah,
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  Craig Bettenhausen: I was gonna say because your article
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  mentioned that there's some legislation in the works that
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  could change, that the
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  Fionna Samuels: legislation that's in the works is basically
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  focusing on trying to basically enable regulatory bodies to get
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  into public spaces and do something about the indoor air
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  quality in public buildings.
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  Craig Bettenhausen: So there would be a new law that would
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  give the EPA authority in that space.
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  Fionna Samuels: Yeah, so the law actually will give the EPA an
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  ability to get into those indoor spaces and have a say about what
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  is considered good or bad air, and they have some pollutants
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  that are on the list that need to be monitored. And the bill
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  will also allow the EPA to add more pollutants as more
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  information and data are acquired by scientists, and
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  Craig Bettenhausen: that's at the federal level. Is there a
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  bill name you can point us to? Yes.
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  Fionna Samuels: So the bill is called the indoor air quality
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  and Healthy Schools Act of 2024, and it was introduced by
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  Congressman Paul Tonko of New York and Brian Fitzpatrick of
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  Pennsylvania. It seems like something that aligns with what
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  a lot of the indoor air scientists are hoping to
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  Craig Bettenhausen: see. So from a very practical sense, what
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  resources are available now to schools that want to improve
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  their ventilation and purification systems.
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  Fionna Samuels: So right now, there are still potentially
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  unspent ESS er grants from when. And the Biden Harris
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  administration was funding schools, specifically elementary
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  and secondary schools, to reopen during COVID In addition to
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  that, there's the inflation Reduction Act, and also the
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  White House has this thing called the clean air and
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  Buildings Challenge, which also has some funding resources. And
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  the EPA has been funding a lot for scientists who want to get
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  involved in helping learn more about indoor air quality, but
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  that's sort of a separate thing than schools. Yeah,
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  Craig Bettenhausen: so this is going to be hard to answer,
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  because schools come into different sizes, but I wonder if
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  you could give a sense of the costs that an average sized
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  school would be looking at to overhaul their ventilation
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  system. What does it cost to really fix these problems in a
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  normal school building?
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  Fionna Samuels: It can cost a lot to fix the ventilation or to
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  fully replace the ventilation. That can be a very significant
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  amount of money, like $10,000 or something, something Mark
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  Hernandez was very adamant about was the fact that when you break
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  down the cost of installing indoor air quality monitors and
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  the short term solution of these HEPA filter based air cleaners,
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  it breaks down to about the cost of a cup of coffee every day per
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  student, because there are so many students that if you
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  consider every student, you kind of disperse the cost across a
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  lot of young people. So I mean, it seems like it would be worth
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  it, and especially if you can use the grants that are
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  available from the federal government to sort of subsidize
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  or to cover those costs. Slightly
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  Craig Bettenhausen: distracted by the idea someone clipping out
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  that one audio clip and having Fiona endorses a cup of coffee
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  for every student.
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  Fionna Samuels: Every student should have a cup of coffee. I'm
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  terrified
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  Craig Bettenhausen: of what would happen if you put some of
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  these air quality monitors, especially for VOCs, in a
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  chemistry lab. Speaking of other spaces that might give you
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  unpleasant results, yeah,
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  Fionna Samuels: I would be worried about that too. I mean,
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  I think that that's and that windows don't open, usually the
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  windows don't open, some of the vent hoods don't work. It's
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  probably even more important to be monitoring those spaces. I
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  guess that's true, especially when you don't know the kinds of
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  things that are going to end up in the air depending on the
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  reactions that you're running again. While this story focused
• 17:34
  on schools specifically, it's not unique to schools, so
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  installing indoor air quality monitors is something that,
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  especially Mark Hernandez thinks, is something that we
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  should be doing across the board in all public spaces, just
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  because information is power we spend, you know, a huge amount
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  of our life in buildings. We're constantly at the ACS office
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  right the other day, I was smelling lemongrass in the
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  hallway, and I had no idea where it was coming from. So it would
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  perhaps be nice to be able to look at a dashboard and say,
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  like, okay, even though I smell this weird thing right now, I
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  can tell that we've got enough ventilation that the air
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  exchange rate is high enough to protect me from any sort of bad
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  pollutant, or offer some measure of protection against bad
• 18:27
  pollutants. Monitoring is power, and that's kind of the overall
• 18:33
  point, beyond just schools Fiona, thanks
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  Craig Bettenhausen: for diving deep with us on this. You're so
• 18:40
  welcome. So listeners can find me on social media as at Craig
• 18:45
  of waffles. How can listeners get a hold of you? My
• 18:48
  Fionna Samuels: email is on the CNN directory, which is totally
• 18:54
  open to anybody. Anybody can email.
• 18:57
  Craig Bettenhausen: So you can find Fiona's cover story about
• 18:59
  air quality in schools, on CNNs website, or in the September 2
• 19:03
  print issue of Cen we put a link in the show notes along with the
• 19:06
  episode credits. We'd love to know what you think of CNN
• 19:09
  uncovered. You can share your feedback with us by emailing
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  cenfeedback@acs.org This has been cn uncovered, a series from
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