 It's Wednesday, Wednesday afternoon, and it's Hawaii, the state of clean energy. I'm Mitch Ewan, your host, and our sponsor is the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum, and that's a program of the University of Hawaii College of Social Sciences and financial support from the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute. So I'm really pleased to welcome two guests today, Noel Maren and Christian Wong of the Hawaii STEM Community Care Organization, and they're going to be talking to us about air quality and trying to, I'm monitoring it with a CO2 device to reduce COVID risk. So it's really interesting technology. So Noel and Chris-Jan, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thanks, Mitch. Great to be here again. So Noel, I want you to give everybody an update on the STEM organization. You have a variety of projects. We've had you a couple of times. So tell us about the projects and bring us up to date on where you are so far. Yeah. Let's go with the first slide. I'll do a quick intro on the organization, essentially. So I just wanted to reintroduce Hawaii STEM Community Care. There's a coalition of Hawaii Island organizations and leaders that is dedicated to finding innovative solutions to local problems. We formed last year in response to the PPE shortage at the start of the pandemic. And we have a number of organizations involved, Hawaii Science and Technology Museum, Christian's organization, Canada Friends, Hawaii Telescope, the Success Factory, Pisces, Hawaii Space Laboratory, SodaKine, a local manufacturer, seamless productions, East Asian Observatory, UH Hilo, and also a local physician, Dr. Craig Berger, just among the individuals and organizations involved. If we go to the next slide, we'll take a look at the things that we've worked on during the past many months. As you can see, our focus has been on PPE production as well as community empowerment. We've delivered face shields, face masks, comfort bands, dispensers. These are sanitizer dispensers, hands-free. We created door openers. We built several UV mask irradiators, which we've ultimately donated to the various fire stations. And Christian here has also created misters for the decontamination of the various equipment and fire trucks, I'm sorry, the emergency vehicles that are used to transport patients. So we have created so many different devices and PPE in response to community need. In addition, we've invested quite a bit of time with Kiki Heroes. I think we've talked about this in a past program as well, where we've essentially come up with so many different messages of empowerment for Kiki and family, and I've been distributing that material across the island. Actually we're making it across the state as well. So it's been a very busy several months, and we have made great progress in terms of distributing these devices and equipment across the island. At the moment, I'm sorry, go ahead. Have you also had students involved in designing and manufacturing some of these devices? Yes, yes. Actually with the STEM focus, we have involved students, different age groups, in the creation of some of these devices, and also the program Kiki Heroes. So yes, they have been involved. We've made it a point to engage the youth so that in addition to delivering the value to our community, we're also exposing our youth to the processes that are being used to come up with these solutions. So they're aware of the design process, they're aware of the various iterations that are required to come up with some of these solutions. Now today, I would like to, I'm sorry, Mitch, did you have any other question? I just want to talk about your funding for the overall group, because this is all donations, correct? Yes, absolutely. Hawaii STEM Community Care is an all volunteer organization, so a number of us have just been contributing our time, but we've also been dependent on donations, grants from other organizations to keep our operation going. And we continue to appreciate and need these donations. So if anyone's interested, you can go to icemcare.org. We have a donate button on the website, and that would be an avenue for contributions. Great. Yeah, so today I'd like to share something that we've been working on since last November, and Christian's been the lead on this. It's essentially what we'd like to do, share information about how a simple piece of equipment can be used to optimize indoor air quality. And we'll talk briefly about why that's important. If we go to the next slide, we are essentially focused on enhancing or creating the awareness of the importance of indoor air quality. And this is really important because COVID-19, I think we all know now, can be spread through aerosols, essentially tiny particles that people exhale. And these tiny particles can actually linger in the air for up to three hours. And if there's someone infectious who has exhale these aerosols, it's possible for someone to be infected. So it's really important for us to be aware of the fact that indoor air quality is important to maintain. And one way to do that is to ensure that there's proper ventilation. If there's an infectious person who's walked into a space and there are infectious particles in the air, if there's proper ventilation, that can be quickly dissipated and diluted and reduce its potential impact to others. Now, the question is, how do we measure? How do we determine if air within a space is insufficiently ventilated? One way to do that is to measure CO2 and CO2 concentration in the air. And with that, I'd like to transition it up to Christian, who's been the lead for this particular project. Hi, thanks a lot, Noel. Thanks very much for having us today, Mitch. We really appreciate it. So yeah, basically how this started is... So I'm the director of the Hawaii Science and Technology Museum, we're a 501c3 STEM education nonprofit on Galina, Hawaii. And in addition to that, until just recently, I was also a member of the Hawaii Fire Department. I recently retired in December. But for my last year in my career, I served on the county's COVID-19 training and education passports. And what our primary role in that was helping all these different businesses and organizations develop their COVID intervention so that they continue to stay open and serve the public and continue to drive our economy forward, while also at the same time protecting their employees and protecting their customers and the community in general. And so through the course of that work, I came across this one particular article about a gym in the mainland that had hired an HVAC engineer to assist them with their COVID interventions. So as you can imagine, a gym is potentially could be a really bad breeding ground for COVID just because it's enclosed. You have a lot of people exhaling quite a bit, typically not good air ventilation in one of those places. So they hired this engineer to help them develop those interventions. And part of that was monitoring for carbon dioxide. And as basically a marker to kind of tell them if the air in their facility was fresh, if their ventilation was good enough, because if you have a bunch of people enclosed in a room and they're all exhaling carbon dioxide, then naturally you would see the levels go up. And if you have good ventilation and fresh air coming in, then you wouldn't see that. We would expect to see the carbon dioxide levels to be about what you would see outside. So what happened in their case is one of their trainers ended up getting COVID and tested positive. And this trainer unfortunately had been in contact with about 50 of their members. But fortunately because of all the interventions they had in place, including the carbon dioxide monitoring, no one else got sick, no one else got COVID. So they felt that they attributed that to making sure that they had good ventilation in their facility. So we have that article as well as a bunch of other articles about the importance of air quality monitoring. We just put it up on our two social media accounts on Twitter and Instagram for Hawaii Science and Technology Museum. You can go read through those articles because they're really useful. I think we're really onto something with this as far as it being one of the best interventions that we have right now to protect ourselves, to protect our community, in addition of course to the vaccines that are coming out. So basically to kind of talk you through it, I brought one of the detectors right here with me today. You know, it's a pretty fairly simple technology but so normally when you're out and about outside you expect the carbon dioxide PPM to be, you know, between four and 500 depending where you are. And so what the HVAC engineer was using was a reading of 800 or less, I think maybe up to 1,000 or less as a good indication that you have enough, your ventilation is good enough that hopefully no one will get sick. I do wanna definitely point out that this is by no means a COVID detector. I mean, that's not where you're doing what you're doing is basically you're looking for a marker that is telling you if you have good ventilation. But that being said, hopefully that it's getting any germs including COVID out of your facility to keep people from getting sick. So it's been a very successful project. Thus far we have 30 units all around Hawaii Island. Mostly we put them in schools. We felt that that would be the priority because a lot of schools are trying to bring students back now. We recognize that the students need to have that social interaction that needs to have the face-to-face time with their teachers. So for us at Hawaii Science and Tech Museum and as a member of Hawaii STEM community care, we wanna try and help our community by making that process safe, as safe for the schools as we possibly can. And with this being one of the main interventions. So as you mentioned to funding, I mean, we're very, very happy and grateful. Hawaii Community Foundation has been so, so supportive of our organization throughout this pandemic through their Hawaii Island strong fund, which paid for a lot of the equipment that we've been putting out into the community. So many thanks to Hawaii Community Foundation and all your donors. We really appreciate it. Did you have any other questions? Yeah, I have several questions. So first of all, how much do one of these detectors cost? Yeah, so they run about $100. It's not a super, super precise instrument, at least the one that we're giving out into the community. And we're giving these out again, thanks to our donors. But you can get them on Amazon. I mean, I'm normally not a big proponent of, for me it's all about buying local, but I don't know if any stores that are selling these locally, but we bought ours off Amazon about a hundred bucks. Like I said, they're not super precise. You wouldn't wanna use it on a hazmat bar or anything like that, but it will get you in the ballpark closing up that you can get a relative measurement that tells you, yes, my ventilation is good or no, it's not. So I'll give you a good example on Black Friday, when I was still with the department, I went out to several facilities and it was really, really crowded. And you could right away, you could notice there was a big difference between outside readings and the readings that I was getting in particular facilities. So it is accurate and it gives it to you in real time. As you can see, my numbers here are moving right now. So I'm just in this room by myself, so the level's fairly low. But they're not prohibitively expensive. Most organizations should be able to buy at least one and then you can take it around and take readings throughout your facility. Well, the other question I have is, where do you actually install it? I mean, do you put it up high, low, or like in the middle of a room, how do you, what's the best spot and how many per room would you need? Is one enough for one room or do you need several of these monitors? I think one is good enough, I guess depending on the size of the room, I mean, if you're talking about a large warehouse and you probably want more than one, but they are portable, you don't have to mount them so you can walk around and like I said, take readings in real time. What I would caution is not to put them low to the ground because carbon dioxide is heavier than air, so it'll give you an artificially inflated reading if you put it really low. Typically, I recommend people put it, maybe waist high level. Again, that's just anecdotally, and again, I do want to emphasize that this is not a COVID detector, we're not making any guarantees, but think of it as a tool that will help you understand if your ventilation is good, which then should greatly reduce the possibility of having infections within your facility. I'd like to, oh, so go ahead. Yeah, Mitch, I just like to expand on that last point about where it's actually placed to take the measurement and as Christian mentioned, you can actually walk around and take measurements within a space, right? Now, I think like, and this would apply to classrooms or any occupied space or restaurant, a bar, for example, you'd want to do it when it's occupied. So you can get a sense for what that risk is like when the facility, the room, the space is actually occupied. And Christian, you might want to just give an example like for that facility that, without naming names, the facility that you visited, when you said it was really high, what was that reading relative to what would be normal? Yeah, throughout the store, I got 1,700 per square million and it never got lower than that. So it's significantly elevated. And sure enough, you can kind of tell to when you're walking around a place, if it feels really hot and muggy in there and there's a lot of people packed in a place, sure enough, you're going to get high readings in there. And I've used this, oh gosh, probably over a hundred times in many different facilities and classrooms and that sort of thing. And I can tell you that the readings match up to what you expect based on the number of people in there. The other cool thing that I like about it too is that it gives you so much data from just one reading. So for example, with some of the schools, you may have eight students in a classroom sitting down and doing their homework and working together. If you take those same eight students in the same classroom, but maybe they do a PE class and they're exercising and exhaling quite a bit, it's gonna significantly increase the CO2 reading. So it tells you right off the bat that for that particular activity, that space may be too small for that amount of people. So it's more than just telling you how many people you can put in there. It also gives you a guideline of what type of activities you can do with that particular number of people. So does the device have an alarm? Like, can you set a level and then it'll beep or do something or do you, so you don't have to constantly look at it? No, this particular one doesn't have an alarm. So some of them do though. Yeah, if you get a more expensive one, you probably could. Yeah, a number of these have alerts, right? So if it goes over a certain threshold, you would get an audible alarm. The other thing that is interesting is some of these also have data loggers. So you can actually have it placed in a space, like in a classroom during the course of the day and you can actually, at the end of the day, take a look at the data, how it changes over time so you can get a sense for what the impact is of certain types of usage of the classroom on the actual concentration of CO2 within the space. So you, in a previous show, you were telling us about some of your air conditioning or air filtration equipment that you were also purchasing for classrooms to kind of filter the air, in this case, air filters. So how would this tie in with one of those air filter units? Can you buy air filter units that have a sensor like this built into them? So because they're always sucking air in. And if you put the sensor at the inlet, you can trigger it when the thing goes on off. Yeah, you're highlighting a, hopefully an innovation or a feature that some of the ventilation fan manufacturers or HVAC folks could produce. And Christian, just for context, I came on this show with, I think it was Richard, right, Richard Ha, to talk about, we talked about air purifiers and the role of air purifiers in helping to increase the safety of a space. And maybe the connection there, Mitch, might be more of, what do you do when you see an elevated reading, right? What are the interventions that one must do? So there's one thing, which is you get the monitor, you monitor the space and then you realize, wait a minute, this is too high, this is not ideal. So the question then is, what do you do? And there is a slide on slide four, which just summarizes some of these things, right? So one of the things would be, a simple things to do would be to open the doors and windows, allow air to flow through. The use of ventilation fans. Now you see this in bathrooms, you see this in certain facilities, but having one placed in a room that allows for air to be exhausted from the room, if it's necessary, it would be another idea. And then also moving activities outdoors and some schools and some facilities have done this, right? Some restaurants have outdoor dining spaces, for example, moving certain activities from indoor spaces to outdoor spaces would be yet another way to mitigate the challenge. Limiting occupancy is another one. Now, what you mentioned about air purifiers is interesting because in some spaces, you can't open the windows, right? Like some of the air conditioned spaces, you've got these split units where the AC just circulates the air, it cools it down, it takes away the moisture, but it just recirculates the air. If CO2 readings are high there, then the use of an air purifier, good air purifier would be warranted, right? To reduce the risk. So it's like, there's not one solution. I think it's just a combination of different things taken together, but the important thing is being aware that there's an issue. And if you're not measuring, you will not know, right? To take action. So how many air purifiers have you deployed? We have 30 out in the community, mostly there are schools. The schools are making really good use of them. They've used them, we've got a lot of really good feedback from them, they've used them to guide, as a way of telling if their interventions were working well or not. A lot of the problem was that teachers would, open their windows or open the door, but they don't know if what they're doing is enough. There, you know, a lot of them would say, oh, well, should I put a fan also? Do I need two fans? What direction should I face them? By having a tool like this, it allows them to get a reading. So it gives them feedback if their intervention is working or not. So yeah, throughout 30 throughout the island, most of the schools, we also did give to the other members of the COVID-19 training education passport to help them when they go out to guide the other facilities as well that they visit. Very useful, very useful stuff. You know, I think this is really going to be key to protecting our community is understanding the role of air quality monitoring as another intervention to protect us from COVID, especially, you know, it looks like, you know, there's these other really highly transmissible variants that are going around the island. So I think this would be very useful. One thing that I always tell people is kind of the Swiss cheese model, where you have all these different interventions and none of them are perfect, you know, you wash your hands, you wear your mask, you monitor your air quality, you take your vaccine, none of them are 100% foolproof, right? They all have holes in them. But if you slap all those pieces of Swiss cheese together, eventually you have a pretty nice barrier that hopefully greatly reduces the chance of you becoming infected and the community spreading it. Well, you know, you guys are out there taking this initiative. You're out there deploying this stuff, you're getting data now. And okay, so I'm going to ask my question, what's wrong with the Department of Health and Department of Education? They got millions of dollars stashed away in their bank accounts that they're not using. And they have a lot of this earmark for COVID. So what does it take to get them to unlock the treasure chest and start deploying these things in mass? I mean, you guys have proven it's worked, you've got to deploy, the teacher's know how to use it. Like, what does it take to get off the dime and get this stuff rolling? No, that's a great question. You always throw out these challenging questions, Mitch. I think that there, you know, there are obviously many different approaches to addressing that issue as well. You know, there's a top down. And I think there's also this bottoms up, you know, approach, which is raise awareness for the, you know, of the solutions that are out there, get it in practice and just continue to put the spotlight on it, right? As a way to raise awareness and run it up the chain. So that's at least one, that's our approach, which is to, you know, tackle it at the grassroots level and do things like this, right? Getting on this program, sharing it with, you know, an audience who hopefully will take note and pay attention and act is one way to accomplish it. There are obviously other ways that need to be addressed here from the top down, but I think that's above my pay grade. Well, you're a volunteer. Your pay grade is like the highest level there. So maybe you guys should put on a Zoom workshop and invite all the high level decision makers and Department of Health and Department of Education to react and all spend two hours together to talk story and ask these hard questions to them. What was it take to get this done? We got the schools shut down. Everybody's like afraid. And these seem like low cost, low, but highly effective ways to address this and we're not doing it. We're just loafing along. Business as usual. Nobody's taking initiative except you guys and the powers of me are like asleep at the switch. We need to wake them up. Yeah, I agree with Noel. You know, it's, I think maybe what the problem has just been is maybe just a lack of awareness of this as a potential intervention. And so, yeah, you know, that's why we're so appreciative that you guys let us come on here and talk about it because the more we can get the word out, the better. Like for us, one of the next steps we're gonna do is work with UH Hilo microbiology and see if there's a correlation between CO2 levels and an actual probability of you becoming infected based on the variance that we have now. One thing I would ask your viewers, you know, whoever's on here or if anyone comes and reads the articles on our social media, if you think that this is a good intervention, call your elected officials and say, hey, I just saw this on Think Tech Hawaii. Have you guys looked into this as a possible way to protect our community? Put it, you know, put the word out, talk to the people at your school, you know, your students, teachers or administrators. The more we can get the word out, the better. You know, like I said, I think it's gonna be really important going forward to protect our community. So we really appreciate you guys having us on here to kind of amplify this message. Well, I highly recommend you guys send this to all the elected representatives, both at the state and county level. And I have to get the word out and they're all gonna hear me ranting. So maybe that'll have an effect on them. I mean, they're all good people. They're all trying to do the right thing. And here's a pretty expensive thing to do when you look at all the millions of dollars we're throwing at this stuff. Just to set aside a few million dollars to put air purifiers in individual classrooms and other public buildings. It seems to me like a really low tech, high result plan. And this is not rocket science. I agree with you 100%. That's the beauty of this particular intervention is that the technology already exists and it has been used in this sort of application in the past. It's not like, you know, trying to develop a brand new vaccine. Obviously that would be the superior intervention but this is something that we can do right now. Again, it's just a matter of getting the word out to the decision makers, like you're saying. Okay, I'd like to... Oh, go ahead. Mitch, I know we're almost out of time but just a real quick note. So the vaccine is out, we all know that. We also know that kids can't get vaccinated and it's gonna be a long while before kids get vaccinated. The other thing we know is that, at least in the US, it's a quarter of the population. And if we're talking about herd immunity needing 90 plus percent immunization, it's gonna be a while, right? Therefore we have to be vigilant. We have to continue doing what we're doing. And this is just one intervention, as Christian mentioned, that can help keep us safe. So with that, I turn it to you. Okay, well, we've got to sign off 30 minutes this blue vial like it normally does. So Noel and Christian, thank you so much for what you're doing for the community and trying to keep us safe despite ourselves. And this is Mitch Ewan signing off for Hawaii, the state of clean energy. Aloha.