Thread on the Corsi-Rosenthal Foundation

The Corsi-Rosenthal Foundation is a tax-exempt 501(c)3 nonprofit organization (EIN: 35-2779639). Our goal is to provide cleaner air in school & other public buildings with particular interest in underserved and/or vulnerable communities. We do this largely through financial grants, materials, or a combination of the two to build Corsi-Rosenthal boxes (CR Boxes). The Corsi-Rosenthal Foundation is run by consensus of a Board of Directors.

The "Sources" chapter of @theNASEM
report on "Health Risks of Indoor Exposure to Fine Particulate Matter & Practical Mitigation Solutions" is approx 60 pages and full of source-specific details. Check out the report here: (some highlights in thread)

nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/27341/… Sources considered:

(1) Ambient air (wide range of sources): penetration of fine PM from outdoor to indoor air

(2) Combustion processes: natural gas, propane, wood, oil, coal, candles, incense

Tobacco considered only for comparative purposes as much is already known/reported.

The "Sources" chapter of @theNASEM report on "Health Risks of Indoor Exposure to Fine Particulate Matter & Practical Mitigation Solutions" is approx 60 pages and full of source-specific details. Check out the report here: 👇 (some highlights in thread)

nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/27341/… Sources considered:

(1) Ambient air (wide range of sources):
penetration of fine PM from outdoor to indoor air

(2) Combustion processes:
natural gas, propane, wood, oil, coal, candles, incense

Tobacco considered only for comparative purposes as much is already known/reported.

Why is indoor fine particulate matter important?

(Thread)

(1) Americans spend the vast majority of their time indoors. Prior to the pandemic, on average Americans lived to be 79 yo (now lower) & spend almost 70 of those years indoors, 54 years insides residences. (2) Most fine particulate matter (particles with diameters of 2.5 microns or less) are inhaled indoors. This is true for fine particles of both indoor as well as outdoor origin. (more on sources of fine PM in a future tweet).

Five overarching conclusions of the new @NASEM report on "Health Risks of Indoor Exposure to Fine Particulate Matter" (thread)

(1) There is ample evidence that exposure to indoor PM2.5 causes adverse health effects

https://twitter.com/CorsIAQ/status/1748788918479380738

(2) Disparities in population exposure to indoor PM2.5 of both outdoor and indoor origin exist

(3) Technological advancements yield great potential for quantifying & reducing exposures

1/ This CR Box (the one on the right!) has now totaled operational time equivalent to an entire in-classroom school year. Both it and its cohort of three other CR Boxes continue to perform with a high level of effectiveness across a wide range of particle sizes. 2/ Four CR Boxes were placed in different indoor settings on the UC Davis campus, from a relatively clean 4-person office suite w/ VCT flooring to a particle-challenged soils lab.

Nominations for 2023 #CorsiRosenthalBox Awards are now being accepted!

Please retweet to spread the word!!!!

Reply to this tweet with nominations (self nominations highly encouraged!). Just do it!

Rules and #CRBoxAward categories are provided in this long thread. 1/ Nominations will be accepted until December 20th 2023. Awards will be announced early January 2024.

Some 2022 #CorsiRosenthalBox award winners showcased here: 2/corsirosenthalfoundation.org/showcase/

1/ Why We're All Still Breathing Dirty Air



Thanks to Apoorva Mandavilli for this excellent article. Honored to be included along with so many other great colleagues.

Some highlights ...nytimes.com/2023/11/20/hea… 2/ "The pandemic raged for six months before global health authorities acknowledged that it was driven by an airborne pathogen. With that revelation came another:"

1/ This #CorsiRosenthalBox is used in a soils lab that is VERY dirty (extreme conditions). After 630 hrs of operation on medium flow it retained the same CADR as initial testing prior to placement in field. We will soon do a 2nd analysis after 1,260 hours of operation. More .. 2/ After 630 hours on medium flow setting the system retained initial size-specific CADR ranging from 400 cfm to 700 cfm for particles ranging from 0.3 microns to 3 microns. respectively. Outstanding results (as we see for CR Boxes in other - cleaner - field sites).

1/ Canadian's beware. An article in Canada's National Post yesterday contains misleading information RE promotion of round-the-clock hydroxyl radical (OH) generation in homes. I have purposely not included a link here. 2/ OH radicals do not "neutralize" indoor air and should not be seen as "keeping your indoor air clean" or to "improve the air you’re breathing." OH radicals are HIGHLY reactive and lead to a wide range of chemical reaction products (by-products) in indoor air.

1/ So appreciate @DrLaPook's continued focus on the importance of indoor air quality & @60Minutes for having @linseymarr & @j_g_allen on the show to discuss the fact that COVID-19 is an airborne infectious disease & has always been despite claims of many "authorities." GR8 job!

https://twitter.com/60Minutes/status/1718786741442847175

2/ Been working on IAQ for decades, doing research & teaching many undergrad & grad engineering classes on it. But few universities even offer 1 course on indoor air quality. As @j_g_allen stated, it's largely been missing from discussions of public health. Univ's included.

1/ Just saw that a company w/ a relatively expensive air cleaner is criticizing #CorsiRosenthalBox es. I wonder why? There are more peer-reviewed journal articles on the CR-Box than their product. 2/ Critical or our @ucdavis study that showed CADR that BLOW other systems away, implying the results seem too good and need to be replicated. Would love to see their data, replicated and in a peer-reviewed journal.

A bit of preliminary data on the CR Box in the @UCDavisCOE dean's office suite - one of several in our on-campus field study. CADR & effectiveness. 1/ Effectiveness (e) is defined as 1 - Cw/Cwo, where Cw = PM2.5 concentration with the air cleaner in place and Cwo is the PM2.5 concentration without the air cleaner in place. 2/

1/ After more than 15 mos & 3,300 hours of operation this CR-Box was tested & sent to CR-Box pasture about 2 mos ago. It was just recalled (with no hesitation) for service while its replacement is going through a suite of 2-month lab testing as part of our field study. 2/ Importantly, even after 15 mos and more than 3,300 hours of actual operation this CR-Box maintains an average CADR (high flow) of about 400 cfm (for particles between 0.35 and 3 microns) w/ over 500 cfm for particles greater than 2.3 microns.

1/ The Dose Makes the (risk of) Infection

My blog entry from August 2020. Still some unknowns at that time, but the fundamentals have not changed.

corsiaq.com/2020/08/19/the… 2/ If you understand that with COVID-19 we have been dealing with an airborne infectious disease for almost 4 years, the concept of inhalation dose & key parameters that define it provides a roadmap for dramatically reducing infections.

1/ On the morning of 9/11 my wife & I like so many others were shocked & horrified. My wife reminded me this morning that on that day I was emphatic that large numbers of people would also get sick and die from ... 2/ extraordinary inhalation, dermal, & hand-to-mouth exposure to dust from fallen WTC towers & combustion products thereafter. Cement dust, asbestos, toxic metals, plasticizers, flame retardants, products of jet fuel combustion, products of smoldering building materials, & more.

1/ Been hearing of some push back by school districts over fears that fan motors on CR-Boxes may overheat and be a fire hazard. This thread addresses those concerns. 2a/ Resistance on the fan motor was considered in design of the original CR-Box. Clearly, resistance is greater if just one filter is duct-taped to a fan, and I wanted to get away from that simpler concept, even though such a design can be quite effective in right-sized spaces.

1/ College students returning to dorms across North America.

Just a reminder that a "classic" 4-5 MERV-13 filter #CorsiRosenthalBox in a 220 sq. ft x 9 ft can add between 15 to 27 ADDITIONAL equivalent ACH to the space (depending on flow setting, fan, etc.). 2/ That's more than what isolation rooms in hospitals are typically designed to achieve. If the starting point before CR Box is 2 ACH, the reduction in respiratory aerosol particles will be approx 90%. If the starting point is 1 ACH then CR-Box yields approx 95% reduction.

1/ In 2020 I worked w/ @Wymelenberg & @HoomanParhizkar to develop an educational tool to help schools see the benefits of various measures for reducing COVID-19 infections in classrooms. The model, named SafeAirSpaces is found at the link below.

safeairspaces.com/safeairspaces-… 2/ The model was amended pivoted around a dose-response sub-model with the expert assistance of @ProfCharlesHaas. The complete model & comparison with actual outbreak scenarios is described in this paper.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.11…

1/ Thanks for the excellent reporting, @apoorva_nyc. It is so disappointing that so much of the available funds have been wasted on relatively ineffective technologies or not used at all.

https://twitter.com/apoorva_nyc/status/1695790088263745891

2/ As stated in the article, it is possible to address airborne infectious agents, e.g., that cause COVID-19 and influenza, as well as other pollutants that improve student and teacher health, productivity, and (thus) effective education for students.

1/ Beware - A lot of uneducated and misinformed (at best) garbage being disseminated by those who do not want others to wear masks to reduce their inhalation exposure to virus-laden respiratory aerosol particles. 2/ Masks do not act like sieves with openings too big to capture some particles or small enough to capture others. Filtration mechanisms are more complex than this and have been well defined on this medium many, many times in the past by those educated on the topic.