Air Particles can be Hazardous(update)

A few years ago I wrote an article in my Blog regarding Hazardous Indoor Air Particles. That was based up Anthrax, if you remember that scare.

Part of my services over 15 years that we perform for many clients everyday at Air & EnviroSolutions Technologies Group, within the Contamination industry is measuring the density of large and small particles of all shapes and sizes within indoor air. The equipment measures the amount of small and large particles every 10 seconds per one square foot. (Approximately what a 12 year old would breathe in within a single breath.) You cannot see these particles. But your body suffers their effect.

The size of particles is directly linked to their potential for causing heath problems. Traditionally, the environmental sciences have divided particles into two main groups and these two groups are different in many ways. PM10 is particles between 2.5 and 10 microns (micrometers) in diameter (a human hair is about 60 micron in diameter). PM2.5 is particles smaller than 2.5 microns. The PM10 and PM2.5 measurements reported, by the EPA for example, refer to the total weight of the particle found. More modern monitoring equipment, such as that used in clean room monitoring, count and size individual particles.

The following explains simply why Coronavirus in repiratory particles, or attached to a microscopic particle is dangerous.

When you inhale, you breathe in air along with any particles that are in the air. This breath of air, along with the particles, travel into your respiratory system, and along the way the particles can stick to the sides of the airway or travel much deeper into the lungs. The smaller they are, the more dangerous they are.

Your lungs produce mucous to trap particles and there are also tiny hairs (called cilia) that move the mucous and particles out of the lungs. The United States Environmental Protection Agency reported “studies suggested small particles can leave the lung and travel through the blood to other organs, including the heart”.

An Excellent indoor environment contains less that 75 count. A Very Poor indoor environment contains 3000 count. I have worked with very ill clients with severe compromised immune systems and respiratory illnesses whose home contained measured particulate matter of over 40,000 count per foot.

No wonder!

Now we have Coronavirus. Many diseases are classified as either contact or airborne. Coronavirus is classified into both categories.

As stated in the Maine Government's Division of Disease Surveillance, regarding Coronavirus updates;

"Airborne diseases are caused by pathogenic microbes small enough to be discharged from an infected person via coughing, sneezing, laughing and close personal contact or aerosolization of the microbe. The discharged microbes remain suspended in the air on dust particles, respiratory and water droplets. Illness is caused when the microbe is inhaled or contacts mucus membranes or when secretions remaining on a surface are touched. Transmission of airborne diseases can be greatly reduced by practicing social and respiratory etiquette. Staying home when ill, keeping close contact with an ill person to a minimum, allowing a few feet distance from others while ill, and wearing a mask, covering coughs and sneezes with elbow or tissue can greatly reduce transmission. Good hand washing can decrease spread of germ-containing droplets that could be picked up on hands from surfaces or hand contact with secretions. Environmental controls and engineering alternatives help reduce transmission of water droplet aerosolized pathogens."

Simply put, particles from Coronavirus, whether respiratory particles, or particles already within the air that the virus attaches to are everywhere.

If we could see these particles, if they were large enough, we definitely would not breathe them in. But we cannot see them.

This is where Air Purification comes in!