Source: https://attheu.utah.edu/science-technology/utah-researchers-put-airborne-viral-transmission-risks-under-the-microscope/ New study takes a closer look at the viability of flu and coronavirus after aerosol-producing events in hospitals. EVAN LERNER – COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING As the COVID pandemic began to unfold in late 2019, researchers around the world scrambled to learn as much as possible about the novel virus responsible for the disease. Until more was known about how this microorganism jumped from person to person, the only surefire mitigation strategy involved strict lockdowns and quarantines. And even as more of the picture came into focus, healthcare experts, policymakers and the general public clashed over the remaining uncertainty. While a better understanding of the coronavirus has enabled most of public life to return to pre-lockdown routines, one critical setting still struggles with this uncertainty: hospitals. Working with or around infected patients means that coming into contact with virus-laden aerosols is unavoidable, but the riskiness of any given interaction is difficult to assess. Now, researchers at the University of Utah are conducting a study that aims to quantify these risks in a more fundamental way than ever before. Rather than relying on intuition or guesswork, hospitals will have real data on how infectious viruses remain after common aerosol-generating procedures, from performing CPR to changing a patient’s bedsheets. The study is led by Kerry Kelly, associate professor of chemical engineering in the University of Utah’s John and Marcia Price College of Engineering. She is collaborating with researchers at the U’s Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine, including Darrah Sleeth, associate professor in the Division of Occupational & Environmental Health and at the Rocky Mountain Center for Occupational and Environmental Health, Catherine Loc-Carrillo, adjunct assistant professor in the Division of Epidemiology, and Kristi Warren, research assistant professor in the Division of Pulmonary Medicine, as well as Rachael Jones at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.When working with patients known to have a contagious disease, healthcare providers and other hospital workers follow a litany of procedures to protect themselves, as well as other patients, from infection. These procedures are tailored to the organism in question and the risk entailed by the specific interactions the patient requires.Coronavirus presents a particular challenge for infection control given how quickly and easily it spreads. With viruses hitching a ride on the moisture of every exhale, even the most basic interactions with infected patients could be considered high risk.Previous attempts to quantify this exposure risk have measured how much viral genetic material aerosols contain, but this data is limited when it comes to a key element: just because viral DNA or RNA is present in the sample does not mean that it was part of a functioning virus when it was captured.“When you pull air through a solid filter, you can catch virus-carrying aerosols, but then they quickly dry out and die,” Kelly said. “By capturing them in a liquid, we’ll be able to tell whether the aerosols emitted by these procedures contained enough viable virus to actually cause an infection.”Kelly has been working with this technology as part of her research on particulate-based air pollution. When the pandemic hit and the risk of various activities became a fiercely debated topic, she immediately began brainstorming how to apply her expertise to the problem.“There are many activities that take place in a hospital that could be considered ‘aerosol-generating procedures,’” Sleeth said. “Although it seems obvious that some are riskier than others, there still isn’t a good way of comparing them. That means decisions are currently being made with incomplete information, and that can have real consequences for both patients and healthcare workers.Supported by a 3-year $2.3 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, the Utah and UCLA researchers will collect aerosol samples from real hospital interactions with both influenza and COVID patients. The potential aerosol-generating procedures studied will include medical procedures with obvious risks of encountering aerosols, such as intubating a patient or measuring their pulmonary strength, as well as everyday interactions, such as changing bed linens.Once the samples are captured, the researchers will associate particle sizes with viral load and virus viability, with a long-term goal of developing appropriate protective measures. Correlating an aerosol’s diameter to its likelihood of containing functional viruses, for example, could directly inform infection control procedures, such as what kinds of personal protective equipment are necessary for a procedure.“The best ways to protect healthcare personnel from infectious aerosols remains quite controversial among some stakeholders, but it is critical to the health of workers and patients that we build an evidence base that enables robust decision making,” Jones said.

Source: https://attheu.utah.edu/science-technology/protecting-kids-from-utahs-worsening-dust-pollution/ With federal funding, professor Kerry Kelly will deploy PM10 monitors at 50 schools to produce highly localized forecasts. BRIAN MAFFLY – RESEARCH COMMUNICATION SPECIALIST   Nearly every day in every corner of Utah, young athletes train or compete in the outdoors, breathing in air that may be, at times, laden with fine particulate matter, dust, ozone, smoke, exhaust and other pollutants.   It’s past time school and health officials got a handle on the exposure kids face when engaged in outdoor activities that are supposed to be healthy, according to Kerry Kelly of University’s College of Engineering. And she has a plan. With the help of a million-dollar grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), it’s about to be implemented in collaboration with various agencies. The idea is to install low-cost air quality monitoring equipment targeting specific pollutants all over the state, both inside and outdoors, to help schools, athletic associations and local health districts make data-informed decisions. “I’m trying to cobble together funding to get 50 outdoor monitors. Ideally, we will eventually go for every athletic field in the state. We’re starting with high schools,” Kelly said. “There are a lot of lungs out there. We’re trying to help people make good decisions. If I can’t really see across the field, should I not be holding this event? Is it fog? Is it particle pollution? What’s going on?” Utah’s state monitoring network is made up of expensive regulatory equipment, which limits the number of monitors that can be deployed to just 12 mostly urban counties. That leaves 17 rural counties in the dark. While the state monitoring stations closely track fine particulate, or PM2.5, only a few stations look at large particulate, better known as dust, or PM10, particles up to 10 microns in diameter. Kelly’s project, called Community Resilience through Engaging, Actionable, Timely, high-rEsolution Air Quality Information, or CREATE-AQI, is funded through NSF’s Civic Innovation Challenge program.  Participating are several agencies, including the Utah Department of Health and Human Services, the Utah Athletic Trainers’ Association, the Utah High School Activities Association, the Utah Division of Air Quality and the Utah State Board of Education. “Being able to collaborate with the university and for them to be able to provide that research, we can then provide the health education and the health messaging, and also the connection with community partners and stakeholders to actually do something to help Utahans protect their health from hazardous pollutants in the air,” said Alejandra Maldonado, a toxicologist with the Department of Health and Human Services. With its mountain ranges and valleys, Utah’s “complex” terrain makes air-quality forecasting a highly localized matter, hence the need for a far-flung network of monitors. “Air quality in one valley can be very different from air quality in another valley or up high,” Kelly said. “People don’t quite understand dust that well. We know there are hotspots that produce dust on the lake, but where’s that going? We have very few regulatory PM10 monitors right now.” Kelly’s interdisciplinary team includes Heather Holmes and  Pierre-Emmanuel Gaillardon of the College of Engineering; Ross Whitaker, professor in the Kahlert School of Computing; Derek Mallia, research assistant professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences; and Sara Yeo, associate professor in the Department of Communication. Airborne dust, rising from dried lakebeds, gravel operations, construction activities and feedlots, is becoming a growing air quality challenge in Utah, according to Kelly, a professor of chemical engineering who served for eight years on the Utah Air Quality Board. Unless Great Salt Lake’s water levels rebound, its exposed lakebed is expected to become a major source of dust pollution for Salt Lake City. Yet the Utah Department of Environmental Quality does not post PM10 levels as it does in real time with other harmful pollutants, such as ozone, PM2.5 and nitrogen oxides, which are measured at its monitoring stations. Meanwhile blowing dust threatens public health and roadway safety, as painfully demonstrated two years ago after a 22-car pileup on Interstate 15 left eight dead in Utah’s Millard County. To better understand Utah’s dust problem, Kelly’s team plans to install up to 50 monitors on athletic fields around the state. There are three technological legs supporting the project. One is improved forecasting, making the forecasts automated, taking the people out of it so you can expand the forecast to the entire state of Utah. Then there’s the sensing leg, taking low-cost air quality measurements. The outdoor devices, which record both PM2.5 and 10, cost $1,000 to $1,500 each to deploy and connect to the cloud, versus the $40,000 its costs to equip a regulatory-grade station. The third leg is integrating the measurements with other data sources to produce the forecasts in easy-to-understand formats using visualization and maps. Kelly’s lab acquires the monitoring equipment off the shelf and evaluates low-cost devices for use in the project. Devices that pass muster will be carefully calibrated to ensure accuracy and deployed into the field with a cellular hookup so they can transmit their measurements to a cloud database. With sensors deployed at dozens of athletic fields and schools, CREATE-AQI’s system will integrate existing meteorological, dust, wildfire smoke and air-quality forecasting models to automatically generate high spatial resolution air quality forecasts. “Our long-term vision is you could put these out and warn people that there’s a problem and before tragedy happens. The goal is to put out sensors that are capable of measuring both PM2.5 and PM10, or dust. And to do that cost effectively to get a better understanding of where dust from the Great Salt Lake is hitting and affecting people.,” Kelly said. “And also on a local level like gravel operations and other types of things that might be affecting community members. And the nice thing about dust is that it’s more local and there are things that you can do to address it.”