 I'm Jay Fiedel, and this is Community Matters, and we're talking with Richard Ha, who's an old friend of ThinkTech, going back to 1925 or so. Okay. And he's with Sustainable Hawaii Energy, you might get that right, which is gonna be the subject of our show. And we're talking to Dane Silva, he's a doctor of chiropractory and a community health leader on the Big Island. So the subject of the day is air purifiers. And I'll tell you, I went down to my doctor, I always have a certain amount of trepidation, leaving and going into an inside space somewhere. And I noticed that he had these air purifiers all around. And I began to think, well, this is not his usual arrangement. This is for COVID. And he wants to keep the air as clean as he can. Then I thought, well, it's transmitted by aerosol. Even Trump knows that, I think. I'm not sure, but I think. And aerosol can transmit virus particles across the room easily and they can hang there in the air. So one of the ways you can deal with COVID is to clean the air, clean the air of virus particles. And Richard has done some research and he's written a very interesting article for on August 23rd, called the consider air purifiers to stay healthy. So Richard, you know, you're so creative. Every time I look, you come up with something so creative and so high tech. So can we talk about air purifiers today? Yeah, and the way you describe it, actually it's common sense. It's not much detailed science. Okay. We like common sense. Yeah, so what are you doing with air purifiers? How did this come to you? And what are you doing with air purifiers these days, Richard? Well, there were two things that popped up recently. The first thing was there was an article in the Atlantic, a magazine, and it talked about the various different ways it looks like the virus is transmitted. And it made a lot of sense to me, you know, that it was spread by air. You know, just watching everything, you kind of come to the conclusion that mainly it's spread through air. And that was one thing. The other thing was hanging in the background is that 40% or more of the people that are transmitting are actually don't have any symptoms or they're just ready to start, you know, getting symptoms. So you really don't know where they are in a room. So putting those two things together, it came about to, well, what can we do about it? And the main issue is that you can't see the virus. See, if you could see the virus, then let's say it was red whenever it comes out of anybody's mouth. If you could see the virus, it'd be easy. You just duck or take a few steps back and watch it go by, but you can't see it. And that's the issue. And if that's the issue, then what can we do to deal with that? And especially in classrooms, you know, when you start to think about where would you start first? Classrooms is an important place as tight because the kids and the teachers are future. So if we start there and deal with classrooms, we have a foundation to build on. So basically that's how it came about. Well, I think it's the successor to this whole notion about filtering the air and also about using ultraviolet. Even Trump talked about that at one time. I think he abandoned the notion, but I think ultraviolet is used in hospitals. They move these robots around, move them into a room, no people involved, and they scan the room with ultraviolet overnight. And that has traditionally, before COVID and everything, that has killed virus and other antigens in that room just by scanning it with ultraviolet light. So if you add ultraviolet or some other method of actually killing the virus into the purifier, then you really got something going. If you're trying to get public confidence in a given layer of protection, this is certainly worth considering just as you said in your article. But let's talk, if you don't mind, let's talk a little science, a little science, Richard. So you said in your article that the filters we have, the purifiers we have, will screen out microns, sorry, particles as small as 0.3 microns what is that? What's a micron? A micron is one millionth of a meter. My wife and I speak a little else at the dinner table. You've studied bioscience and all. Tell us about a micron and tell us about a nanometer. What is all this and how can you, how mechanically can you screen out something like a virus particle? You know, virus particles are invisible. I remember doing research up at the University of Hawaii at Hilo where I collected some samples of water from the garden and processed them and stuck them in a microscope, the electron microscope. And I could actually see the viruses or varions as we call them on the screen of the microscope. The fact that they're extremely small is basically what everybody wants to know. They don't really understand what is a meter. Okay, this is America. We don't use meters, we use feet. So therein lies a problem where we're unable to communicate to each other about sizes. When we talk about, we're supposed to be six feet distance from each other. You know, it's approximately two meters, all right? Now, one millionth of a meter, that's one micron. One thousand millionth of a meter, that's a nanometer. When we talk about things like in nature, when we talk about light, wavelengths of light, we talk about nanometers. It's extremely small. So how can anything capture a tiny little object, an invisible virion in the air around us? Well, a couple of ways you can accomplish that. First of all, understand that these virions are not floating around by themselves. They're in a envelope of fat and water and they're floating around. They came out of somebody's face and their mouth and their nose. You know what happens when you have stuff in there? It comes out coated with mucus and it has a liquid envelope. So the virions are not- Yeah, I'm not to interrupt, but I remember that one of the ways that you kill a COVID viral particle is you destroy the lipid oil coating it has. If you can destroy that, you destroy the particle. So it's this oil that makes it actually bigger than its essential size, yeah? Correct. Yeah, sorry, go ahead. It's important to learn a little bit about what we call virology, how the virus replicates and then we can understand how we can get rid of it, block it, terminate it. The air purifier is one way. One of the air purifier methods is to create a stream of ions in the air and the ions attached to the virions and then bring them down to the fan and the filter of the air filter and removes it. One of the things you have to be considered about when you're working in an industrial space is that the filters will need to be changed and those filters tend to be expensive. But if you're working in a home or in a car or in an office, it's very inexpensive to go out and find and shop for different types of purifiers. I know you mentioned ultraviolet at some point. In many places, ultraviolet is used in entry and exit points to bathe people in ultraviolet. And then when they're working at a desk or at a lab station, workstation, there are ultraviolet lamps placed near there as well as purifiers. When you're working with virions and other things like fungi and bacteria, you need to be extremely careful about what you touch and how you breathe it and what types of masks and protective equipment you use. You need gloves. You need masks. You need shields. These are all to protect you. Yeah. Well, as Richard said in his article, you have to have multiple layers of protection because no one layer can do all of it. But if you put layer upon layer, your chances of being protected are that much better. So Richard, I mean, if you do this, if you put a purifier, say in your bedroom or your office or anywhere in your house, where do you put it? You put it on a counter, put it on the floor. The ones in my doctor's office are on the floor, by the way, and they're about two feet high, about a foot wide, foot deep. They're very quiet and they work in all the time. But where do I put it if I get it in my house? Yeah, it depends. If your house has air conditioning, then you gotta look at where the air is flowing. It comes out of the top, goes into the room, then comes back to the bottom. So in other words, it's continuously circulating. Now, if you are thinking about what happens if there's an asymptomatic person in the room, then it's a good idea to understand how the air flows and set your air purifier in the air movement. And to give you an example, let's compare that to a room, maybe a classroom that does not have air conditioning. They have to then rely on the outside air. So let's say the windows are all open, the air's coming through and goes out through the door. Now, if you have an asymptomatic student right where the air comes in, then the next person in front and the next person in front is in the air stream. So the objective is to put your air purifier, dead center in the room if you have one. What that does is it purifies the air because like most of the ones that they recommend, the portable air purifiers, they say like every 10 minutes, they would like to see the air exchange. So every 10 minutes, that's a pretty good amount of air exchange. So dead center in the room of the air flow is where I would say. Yeah, then it goes the same question exists for air conditioners and how big a unit do you want? And I suppose that's the function of how big the room is as well as air flow. So if I go and buy one, how do I determine the, well, with air conditioners, it would be BTU or something, but what about the size of the air purifier? How do I know what's the right size? Yeah, you know, there are third party people that analyze these air purifiers. So what we did was we worked with Kyokawa Elementary School to get the whole school air purifiers. And the one they chose was, would handle a room the size of 500 square feet, assuming eighth ceiling. And they made all their decisions based on that. And when you look at the instructions, it'll tell you how fast it rotates the air through the room and stuff like that. And you know, basically for 500 square feet, it only cost them $250 and it's freight freight to Hawaii. Well, oh wow. And what was the source of that? Was that what manufacturer? What ship or Amazon? Was Amazon involved? Yeah, it was through Amazon, yeah. And there's several different places where you can go to get instructions as to what to choose. And because I'm not a scientist, I don't want to be the one to recommend a specific brand because, you know, I'm a banana farmer, you know? So yeah. I forgot. Rich Puchin-Ha is a farmer in his heart. And to a large extent in his business. So, okay, well, so I just wonder what kind of studying I have to do. Let's assume that I'm, you know, I'm Joe Doe and Joe Doe, Joe, whatever it is. And I want to do this, I like this idea. So I go to Amazon, but then I'll probably see 50 of them there. How do I know the good ones that look for the ratings? How do I find one that would work best? Where can I research this, Richard? If you go to Consumer Reports and you ask for something that's recommended for coronavirus, they'll give you how they rate it. And then you look at the specifications and you decide. Oh, good. Okay, that's a good way in. So, you know, Dan, you had a series of chiropractic officers on a big island and you put these purifiers in each one of them. How did you select the purifiers you used? How did you determine the sizes and how did you determine the placement? Well, Jay, I started accumulating and testing these air purifiers in the mid 90s. That was quite a while ago and we're still using the same air purifiers. I'm not promoting any specific brand, but the one that I found at that time was called Alpine. And today they call it the Classic, which means it's a real old model. And it still works very well. Like I've tested a few of them some, and they were not $250 25 years ago. Okay, they were much more expensive, but they worth it because they clean the air. You know, today we're talking about coronavirus. We have had a lot of viruses coming into our environment over the past 25 years. Okay, so we have some of us have been addressing that issue all this time. And the air cleaning the air is one of the main issues. Cleaning the water is another one. Cleaning the environment is another one. Okay, SARS, I remember SARS virus. I was coming out of Japan and I got screened for that. So we have been dealing with these things for a long time. And we will continue to deal with them for a long time. You know, COVID is not the last one. You mentioned ultraviolet a moment ago. I'd like to show you an ultraviolet wand. Can you see this? This is an ultraviolet wand. You use it to illuminate areas that you're working in to decontaminate those areas. You can use it in your car, in your kitchen. You know, and then there's ways of getting disinfectant all over, you know, you can spray it all over the place. We use a little nebulizer. So how to deliver, you know, the punch to the virus or the variants is really important. Air filters essential. You asked the question earlier, you know, do you put it on your desk? If you have a small one, you can put it in your car. So now the ultraviolet wand you just showed us, is that dangerous in any way? Because I remember that you could have a negative effect on, I think, your skin if you had prolonged exposure to ultraviolet. Sure. In the hospitals, when they move these robots into the hospital rooms, they don't want anybody in that room because they don't want that negative effect. Yeah. Yes, you don't want to be bathing underneath the ultraviolet light. However, you can use it to illuminate surfaces and decontaminate the surfaces. If you're working in a, you know, bio safety lab where testing is done for variants and bacteria, you'll see that there are points where there's ultraviolet lights at the entrance and exits to make sure that when you're passing through wearing a PPE, you're going to be bathed in the light. The key is not to have the light touch your skin. Yeah. Richard, what about, I think I saw this in your article, what about including the light in the purifier? In other words, I can't think of good reason why not to do that. Whatever air is being purified, you can run it in front of an ultraviolet light inside the machine. Is that being done? Yeah, it's being done. But some of the measurements is not very clear at this point. So although I got that kind for my own self or my house and stuff, because it's not very clear, I'm not recommending it for anybody else to use it. They have to decide that on their own. But if some scientists can figure that out, I defer to that, yeah? The other thing you mentioned that I want to explore a little bit is we have this initiative, and I hesitate to think how far it may not have gotten very far, where the governor said he was going to put air conditioning in every classroom, permanent and temporary, around the state for the comfort of the students inside. That was before COVID. But I wonder, in the case of a classroom, for example, can you get along without the air conditioning and just a purifier? Should you use both? Is an air conditioner a way to substitute for the purifier? I mean, how do they interrelate? Well, the air conditioner just works all day long, and the air rotates through the room. It doesn't clean up the air after it comes out of the air conditioner. So it goes into the room as clean as it can get coming out of the air conditioner. But if there's anybody sitting in the room that's asymptomatic, it just adds more virus particles to the air, possibly. If you put a portable air purifier in the room, what you're doing is you're lowering the amount of virus that's floating around in the air. And I guess nobody knows exactly how much before you catch the disease, but there's a point where it gets so low that you actually don't catch it. And we don't know the answer to that at this point. But what happens if the air purifier actually lowers it to the point where it doesn't spread? Then essentially, an asymptomatic person could be sitting there and possibly not spreading it around to the other people. We don't know that. But why not be safe rather than sorry? Oh, yeah. Why not take every layer of protection you can get? Well, there's two things that you referred to that I think are worth exploring. Number one is how much virus would you get into your system before you got sick? And my reading early on with regard to COVID was that even a very small amount would be enough to make you sick. Later on, it appeared that no, no. As you said, Richard, it's a critical mass thing. It'd make differ depending on your immune system, your strength, whether you've been compromised in some way. But it's more than a tiny, tiny thing. It's more than one virion, for example. It's got to be a certain critical mass of this. The other thing is, how long does the viral particle last before it dies of its own? And dies, again, I think I referred to the deterioration of the lipid shell around it. And by the way, when you wash your hands with soap, the bubbles and the chemical action of the soap is what destroys that lipid shell and thus kills the virus. So I've seen various estimates about how long it lasts in a given room. Suppose I don't have air conditioning. Suppose I don't have a purifier. Suppose I have people coming and going and some of them are infected. And the aerosol is generating a layer of particles at some height in that room, aside from surfaces where people touch, aside from that, just the air. How long? Do you have an idea from this thing? How long does that particle last before it just gets old and dies? When you're in a situation where you have an office, for example, you can turn on your filter long before anyone walks into it other than yourself. That is the proper protocol. You're going to first scrub the air before anybody visits you. Why not leave it on all the time? You could do that. But if you're considering energy use or just wasted energy, there's nobody going to be in that room and there's nothing in that room. There is no need to keep things in operation all the time. So normally when we go in, the first thing we do is turn on the filters. And if you're going to have patients coming in, let's say at 9 o'clock, you can start turning on the filters at 7 or 8 o'clock. And it'll certainly do the deed. Once you start using the filter, you will notice a difference. If you're using an ultraviolet filter, you can actually tell there's a smell, a different odor in the air. So it's really proof is in trying it out and using it. And maybe the best thing is to have somebody do a display or a demonstration, and then you go in and you check it out in their room, and then you can see for yourself how effective it is. Let's say, for example, you have somebody walking in with a perfume, how soon will you be able to get rid of that smell of the perfume by using your air filter? That's when we have testing. Yeah. So but without a filter, I don't know. Maybe there's not enough science on this. But without a filter, how long will the virus particles last, hanging in the air? Is it a day? Is it two days? Is it a matter of hours? I don't have the data on that. I don't have the information on that. It will depend also on things like the temperature, humidity of the room, of the air. Some virions can live in water. That's encouraging. We still don't know enough about this, honestly. And we're finding out maybe I could say the hard way. But let's go back to the point in your article, Richard. You talk about layers. And certainly, it seems to me I'm convinced, personally convinced that ampurifiers are one significant layer. They've got to be deployed properly. And you've got to make some analysis and read up a little. But it seems to me they're an important layer. But what are the other layers? The other layers don't go away. For example, starting at the very beginning, you still have to wash your hands. You still have to wash surfaces that have been touched. What else? What are all the layers you can think of to get the best protection you can get? Social distancing, making sure that you don't have a whole lot of people squeezed into a small space. And that's essentially what everybody looks at right now. And adding an air purifier is just one more layer added to that other layers of safety. On social distancing, everybody says six feet. And I think that's sort of the common understanding. But I've seen articles that say that six feet, given the aerosol spread that we are talking about, absent an air purifier, the social distancing would actually crawl for more than six feet. And I've seen numbers as high as 16 feet. Have you seen anything like that? I hear the same thing, exactly. And they talk about, if you imagine cigarettes, somebody smoking a cigarette, and you're sitting across of that person for 15 minutes, that's what they're talking about. And that's a general up. So in other words, you don't catch it just immediately. It takes a little bit of time, but you can't see it. It's the problem. Yeah. Well, let me ask you, Dane. We only have a few minutes left here. This could be more than just your home and more than just schools, which we care about a lot. Let's take, for example, a small business. Let's take a bar or a restaurant. And we really watch the products. Richard examines which of these purifiers is doing what, how good they are, in terms of acting as a layer of protection. And then we settle on one. Call it the XYZ purifier. And it's got a lot of range. It's got a lot of power. It's got maybe it would filter out particles of 0.3 microns or less even, catch every single variant. And we put, say, hypothetically, we put in ultraviolet systems in this machine. Doesn't matter how big or small. Frankly, it doesn't matter how much energy it uses, although that's always of interest. And then we try this out in a restaurant, like almost like a phase three trial, like a vaccine trial. And we check everybody out and we try to make some kind of calculation of the data to see whether it is working and stopping all spread of virus in that restaurant. And let's assume that we can actually analyze that data and we can determine this box, this XYZ box, actually does the job. And this data to prove that it does the job 99 point, say 99.3% of the time. What effect does that have? The discovery of this system. What does that have on the future of our economy? Think about it. That's really huge, because businesses, restaurants, and stuff like that have a huge sign out front saying, I have filters if I run a business like that. So because the people that are going to come inside, they're going to come inside if they feel safe. They're not going to say anything. They're just going to look around. If I feel safe here, I'll go there. So the more we can do and help the businesses like that, the more we can get back to normal. So it's really important that we take care of the inside air we share. And then just be common sense about what works and what doesn't work and stuff like that. Yeah. So, Dane, how much of what Richard says you agree with? Well, I agree with everything that Richard has said. And I think that you have also opened our eyes to a lot of different questions that need to be answered. And we look forward to helping everyone to discover those answers because it's important as we move forward to restore our social behaviors, social relationships, and visit those restaurants and bars that you've been talking about. Don't forget barbershops. Well done, Dane. Well articulated. And Richard, thank you so much. I think it's a great contribution to the community to have this conversation and, as you said in your article, to consider the possibility. Thank you so much, Richard Hart. Thank you, gentlemen. Dane Silva, appreciate it. Aloha. Thank you. Aloha.