Since there is talk about bringing back ASBESTOS (this is somehow true), I thought it would be useful to describe just some what happens to you when you breath this stuff into your lungs.

In short, it’s terrible.

A 🧵 What is asbestos?

Asbestos is a group of naturally occurring fibrous minerals. There are 6 types: Chrysotile, Amosite, Crocidolite, Tremolite, Actinolite and Anthophyllite.

They have some useful properties (including heat resistance, strength, durability and well insulating)

We just had an article published in ACS Central Science on the how the pH of exhaled aerosol evolves over time

As we’ve previously reported, respiratory aerosol pH (high pH!) is a driver of SARS-CoV-2 decay. Meaning, understanding the pH dynamics is important for estimating risk This paper is a step in the direction of improving our undertanding of exhaled aerosol pH.

Alright, so here’s a link to the article:

pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.10…

Martha asked an interesting question, so I thought I’d try to answer it.

Essentially, the question is how long to wait before one is 95% certain that the room is Covid free, given a certain set of conditions.

https://twitter.com/mryoung151/status/1926799569515417923

Disclaimer at the top: I am not a modeler, I am an experimentalist (that occasionally publishes simple models).

The data used to make these estimates are from experimental studies. The absolute values will not be exact, but the general trends and scales will be accurate.

The article claiming that SARS-CoV-2 remains infectious in the air for 16 hours has been making the rounds on social media again.

I thought I would take this opportunity to discuss it, what it shows, what it doesn’t, and why I think it shouldn’t be taken seriously.

A 🧵 First off, here’s the article:

wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26…

We just had an important paper published that compares different technologies used to measure aerosolised microbes.

This resulted from a collaboration between multiple research teams in the USA and the UK. Here’s a link to the article:

tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

Climate change is a massive problem.

Geoengineering, even if possible, is not going to be a good solution for a variety of ethical (and technical) reasons.

Some thoughts. 🧵 First off, here's a link to The Guardian article that got me thinking about this:
theguardian.com/environment/20…

I received this question over on B-Sky, and thought maybe other might have it as well. I thought the easiest way to answer would be to put together a short thread. When it comes to short distance transmission, the proximity one has to the exhalation plume is important. But what dictates the size of the plume (ie how far does the exhaled aerosol initially travel)? And what factors matter?

A new study came out showing that smoking cannabis leads to “myocardial infarction and cardiovascular risks”. If you understand what happens when inhale a tremendous amount of particulate matter, these findings are not at all surprising.

Some thoughts.

https://x.com/outbreakupdates/status/1902015255850459350

Exposure to elevated levels of particulate air pollution begins a cascade of biological responses.

A study has come out the discusses how “new inactivation data significantly influences infection risk predictions”.

Since that “new inactivation data” was from our team’s research, I have some thoughts. Here’s a link to the study:

link.springer.com/article/10.100…

I was asked this question, and thought since it will take a bit of an explanation, I figured I’d make a thread.

https://twitter.com/sri_srikrishna/status/1893820257153802668

Essentially, the question is about the degree to which exhaled water vapour from evaporating aerosol would affect the humidity in a room.

A paper was published that presented a new model to predict airborne disease transmission. There were many features included in this model that make it interesting.
I have some thoughts.

https://twitter.com/DrInfoSec/status/1894769199773372812

First off, here's the paper.

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rs…

AI (eh-eye, not AL) has rapidly become a common tool people use to answer complex science questions.

But is it reliable?

Storytime. 🧵 Recently, I made a two-part series on my YouTube channel where I discussed the effect of humidity on the transmission of Covid-19.

This study made some waves on social media yesterday. It purports to show that CO2 concentration doesn’t correlate with covid transmission.

Let’s talk about this, I have some thoughts.

sciencedirect.com/science/articl… Context: Why do people think knowing the CO2 concentration is important when it comes to Covid transmission?

There are 3 unique reasons.

You have no idea. Ironically, I found out about this letter when I was on my way to a dinner to celebrate the end of a 5 year covid project I was on. This project resulted in 14 papers in high impact journals where we explored how SARS-CoV-2 is aerosolised through talking/singing

https://twitter.com/drseanmullen/status/1880829988871803062

Needless to say, to find out right then that the government had produced this letter was bizarre and upsetting. Like, why are we doing all of this research if they are just going to ignore it?

When I shared the letter with others on the team, it got a little awkward....

If you got a CO2 monitor for Christmas and are wondering what exactly the device is used for, I’ve put together a video to walk you through some ways you can use it improve your indoor air quality, and to lower your risk of catching airborne viruses (C19)
With New Years coming up, you may be having friends over. You can use a CO2 monitor to see how best to ventilate your home, to make sure that your friends and family start the year off healthy! I walk you through how to measure your home's ventilation here

I was asked to walk through why the work published earlier in the year by the Lund group is so important. I’ve put together a thread to walk through some of my thoughts.

https://twitter.com/DrInfoSec/status/1872658552852238579

First, here’s a link to the study.
nature.com/articles/s4159…

Thanks for your interest in our work. You’ve asked a lot of “out of the box” questions here, and I’ll address some of them.

https://twitter.com/ShaneBond77/status/1865713082237874479

Exhaled aerosol has a water activity of ~0.995. The RHof fog could be higher: the the aerosol would simply take up water from the gas phase. For viruses such as influenza, where the salt concentration seems to be very important, this would lead to an reduction in the decay rate.

A study came out last month looking at how long influenza remains viable in the air.

In the article, it highlights some of my larger concerns in what is happening in the field of airborne viral decay.

First off, here’s the article:

frontiersin.org/journals/micro… Out of the gate, the article is fine.

My largest critique is the assertion that 99% decay means something. Why 99%? Why not 98%? Or 97… or 92… 87%? 83.5%?

How does humidity affect the transmission of SARS-CoV-2?

There's a lot of confusion around this question. Is dry air or wet air better? Somewhere in between? In this explainer video I dive into this and go into what we know, and what we don't. This is the first part of a (what I expect to be) a two part series. In this video I discuss how humdity affects transmission. In the followup I will dive into why humdity does, or does not, have an effect.

Are respiratory aerosol liquid, solid, neither or both? What about the virus, where does it go? Let's get into this.

https://twitter.com/open_erv/status/1835736015794798823

We published some work on this previously where we studied how respiratory aerosol changes once it is exhaled.

tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

There's been a lot of discussion about the size of exhaled aerosol that contains the most virus. For the most part, it's thought to be in the ~1 to ~5 micron range. There's a little bit of variation between studies, but that's roughly the size of concern (“Viral”).

https://twitter.com/piotr_wasik/status/1835253421584089103

If you are curious, this is due to a combination of the size distribution of exhaled aerosol and maximum conc that the virus can grow in the respiratory fluid. Here we looked at aerosol size, others have looked into the viral load as a function of size.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…