At the beginning of last summer, I was beginning to breathe a sigh of relief. My children had been in school last spring, and by the heroic efforts of their amazing teachers and staff, had not been infected with nor had to quarantine for COVID 19. They wore masks like champions, ate lunch outdoors while their teacher read to them, were broken into smaller cohorts, and we were even treated to a socially-distanced outdoor play at the end of the year with the parents masked and distanced on the lawn and our highly spirited kiddos singing valiantly through their masks into the sunshine. It was definitely a glimmer of hope.
Some darker clouds began to gather on the horizon as I worked this summer in the ICU, particularly with the explosive spread of the delta variant and rising hospitalizations among adults and children. I had breathed a sigh of relief after our school teachers and coaches were vaccinated last spring, but became more nervous over the summer as the reality sank in that the vaccines, though highly effective at reducing hospitalizations and ICU stays, were not an iron barrier. My concern for my three unvaccinated children and their friends at school grew. I breathed another sigh of relief when a statewide mask mandate for children in school under age 12 was issued for my state. I hoped this meant that our children’s hospitals would not be overwhelmed.
Watching schools open and slam shut again already this year has exposed that we also need to do more. That more involves the air itself, and how we ensure we clear it as best we can of the virus that would love to sneak under the masks of our kids or settle on their wide-open and learning eyes.
To learn more, I spoke with Dr Paula Olsiewski of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, where she is a pioneering leader in policy and scientific research programs in the microbiology and chemistry of indoor environments. She received her PhD in biological chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and early in her career, was the Vice President of Product Development at Enzo Biochem and President of Neo/Tech Corp. She spent two decades at the Alfred P Sloane foundation leading innovative and multidisciplinary programs partnering with academic, governmental and for-profit stakeholders understanding the chemistry of indoor environments and the microbiology of the built environment. She is recognized as a leading expert in biosecurity and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She is chair of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Homeland Security Research Subcommittee and is a member of the EPA Board of Scientific Counselors Executive Committee, in addition to serving as a member of the NTI|bio Working Group for Biosecurity Innovation and Risk Reduction Initiative and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in chemistry.
She is the author of a report with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security created to help schools and parents understand simple steps we can take to decrease risk to kids from COVID19 via improving indoor air quality. We discussed this on the podcast.
I really appreciated our conversation, and find hope that we can likely reduce the risk to our kids and teachers by adding HEPA filters into our classrooms. Most importantly, we need to make sure this opportunity is available to all children, particularly those who have often been left behind in this pandemic. Heartbreakingly, there are kids who never logged on last year or showed up to school, and may have families afraid to send them this year. There are funds available to ensure that we can provide this assistance even to already financially distressed schools. It will be an investment in indoor air quality that will also pay off in the future, as we know unhealthy air from pollution, wildfire smoke, and poor ventilation already affect our children. Nothing will ever make our children completely safe, which is the persistent ache of being a parent. However, they deserve a school year in person if possible, and we as the adults in their lives, should do our best to make sure they get it.
To Do:
1- Reach out to your school- Find out about the number of air changes per hour in the room. Ideally it should be 6 or more.
2- Find out if your school has an HVAC system with MERV13 air filters or higher. If not, request that your school work on obtaining them or put in HEPA filters and make a plan for proper filter maintenance throughout the year.
3- Review filters on CARB here to ensure they are safe. You want mechanical filters to remove particles. Learn more about air filters and HVAC here, and how to size and place portable filters. Review the full Johns Hopkins report here.
4- Be a parental voice for school safety- advocate masking, vaccination, distancing, and testing.
5- Get your COVID19 vaccine if you have not done so. Lovingly encourage those around you to do the same. This is the most important step.
References:
California Air Resources Board – List of CARB Certified Air Cleaning Devices.
Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security Infographic on COVID19 and Homes (English)
Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security Infographic on COVID19 and Homes (Spanish)
Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security Infographic on COVID19 and Schools.
