Shelly Miller News

Scientists advocate for policies regulating indoor air

Anonymous — Mon, 01 Apr 2024 20:19:25 +0000

Scientists advocate for policies regulating indoor air Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 04/01/2024 - 14:19

A group of international experts, including ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder’s Jose-Luis Jimenez, CIRES Fellow and distinguished chemistry professor, and Shelly Miller, mechanical engineering professor, presented a blueprint for national indoor quality standards for public buildings, in a paper published today in Science.

“The science is very clear that improving indoor air quality would have enormous health benefits by reducing both disease transmission and indoor pollution,” Jimenez said. “But we think that will only happen with legally binding standards.”

The authors addressed setting standards for three key indoor pollutants: carbon dioxide (CO₂), carbon monoxide (CO), and PM2.5, which are particles that can lodge deep in the lungs and enter the bloodstream. In addition to the three pollutants, the authors suggest a fourth standard surrounding ventilation rates.

Jimenez and Miller, along with lead author Lidia Morawska, a distinguished professor at Queensland University of Technology, are internationally known for leading the appeal to the World Health Organization (WHO) to recognize the airborne transmission of COVID-19 early in the pandemic. The group has continued to study and publish papers about indoor air quality in public spaces.

“Indoor air in public buildings is a shared public good, just like outdoor air or drinking water,” said Miller. “To protect public goods from exploitation by polluters who may disregard human health impacts it is critical to provide guidelines and standards, which we have for outdoor air and drinking water.”

The authors recommend that indoor air quality standards be incorporated into the design of new buildings, or in the retrofitting of old structures— which will not be cheap.

“While there is a cost in the short term, the social and economic benefits to public health, wellbeing, and productivity will likely far outweigh the investment in cost in achieving clean indoor air,” Morawska said.

The authors wrote that initial progress could be simple and cost-effective: CO₂sensors are readily available, inexpensive, and robust and could be used as a proxy for the presence of exhaled pathogens such as the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and for the accumulation of indoor chemical pollutants.

If policymakers respond to the scientists’ call to action, Jimenez knows change won’t happen overnight.

“What we are talking about is going to take a generation,” Jimenez said. “Just as it took many decades to provide clean water after the discovery that cholera was waterborne in the 1850s.”

This story was adapted from Queensland University of Technology’s press release.

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Faces of Community-Engaged Scholarship: Professor Shelly L. Miller

Anonymous — Mon, 01 May 2023 20:36:31 +0000

Faces of Community-Engaged Scholarship: Professor Shelly L. Miller Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 05/01/2023 - 14:36

Professor Shelly L. Miller is a problem solver and an air pollution engineer. She finds reward and value when solving issues with immediate benefits, such as improved public health. Doing her work through a community partnership model is a match made in heaven.

How did you start working in public and community-engaged scholarship, and what motivates you to prioritize it?

My interest came about in the early 2000s when I joined ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Denver colleagues to work in Commerce City on a HUD-funded project. That was my first community-engaged work. We went into 100 homes to set up monitoring stations, created questionnaires and interviewed community members. My ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Denver colleagues were experienced in a public setting, whereas I had previously only been in the lab.

Afterward, I started working more with citizen scientists and community members because, to make an impact, I need to work in communities to determine their number one concern and how we can address it. I’m dedicated to problem solving for urban air pollution because I care about people’s health, and air pollution increases illness and death. I need to engage in order to help.

What have you learned about this model of working?

I appreciate multi-disciplinary teams, and I like that environment. Currently, I’m working with a sociologist and computer scientist, and I’m the environment person. It’s a great team because the social science team is incredibly skilled in working with communities. It takes time and extra asks, and participants want and deserve something in return. Previously, I worked with a geographer who can really work with large data sets and geographical differences between communities and those influences on working with communities.

I’ve also learned that I have to be comfortable with variability in data collection. I have to be able to say I can’t answer some of the technical questions because I’m working with citizen scientists in less controlled environments.

I see two things over and over again when visiting communities. Few people realize they should use a carbon monoxide detector at home. The second thing is that people don’t have ducted stove hoods, or they don’t use them. No matter the type of stove, we should always vent when cooking. Cooking foods release volatile compounds and airborne particles. If your vent isn’t ducted, open your windows or move an air cleaner into your kitchen. Air pollutants move around the house rapidly.

What current projects are you involved in?

The project I mentioned before, with my sociology and computer science colleagues, is an NSF project called Social Justice and Environmental Air Quality (SJEQ-D). We’re working in Denver communities next to an I-70 construction project to see how the construction has affected air quality and health. We hope to conduct the same study in other locations such as Pueblo and ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Springs.

Two years ago, the Office for Outreach and Engagement funded a project about pesticide exposure. I don’t have much expertise in this area, but my colleague had wristband samplers. We found interesting results in the City of Boulder, and the city has funded us to repeat the study this spring.

I’m advising two projects out of California related to exposures from ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ. With one, we ran into issues for lower-income communities who often don’t have AC, so they use open windows. In response, my colleagues are developing a swamp cooler with air filtration abilities. The other project is assessing elder communities and whether wildfire exposure increases aging markers and health issues.

Why is public and community-engaged scholarship important for ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder?

It’s one of my favorite parts of ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder. What else are we here for? We’re here to develop future leaders, community members and engineers, but at the same time, we also need to actively support our communities right now.

Training an engineer is four years of education, but along the way, they can engage in helping communities. And at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ, we do this across all disciplines. It makes ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ a better place and connects ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ to our citizens in a grounded way. They meet us and can see the institution’s value.

What would you say to fellow faculty members about incorporating public and community-engaged scholarship?

I guess I would say that you won’t know how great it is or if you’ll enjoy it until you’ve tried it. The barrier isn’t that high. The outreach program is welcoming of kinds of ideas and funds lots of work. I encourage people just to try it. They might find it incredibly rewarding.

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Engineering’s Shelly Miller to deliver Distinguished Research Lecture on April 20

Anonymous — Fri, 24 Mar 2023 17:43:31 +0000

Engineering’s Shelly Miller to deliver Distinguished Research Lecture on April 20 Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 03/24/2023 - 11:43

When Shelly Miller was growing up in southern California in the 1980s, there were days when poor air quality from smog would prevent her from going to school – or even going outside at all.

“What I find interesting is that there are more sources of air pollution in that area now – more people and cars – but the air quality is better,” said Miller, a professor in the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Environmental Engineering Program. “That is a tribute to the hard work environmental professionals have done there to address the problem and improve quality of life and public health overall.”

Miller said contributions to the public wellbeing by scientists like that – with real and tangible impacts for everyday people from their work – motivated her to pursue research into urban and indoor air quality issues herself. Now, after 25 years as an educator and leader at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder, she is being recognized for her own contributions to the field of air quality and her positive impact across campus.

Miller was recently honored with a 2022 Distinguished Research Lectureship – one of the highest awards bestowed upon a faculty member at the University of ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder by their peers. It honors a faculty member who has been with ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder for at least five years and is widely recognized for a distinguished body of academic or creative achievement and prominence, as well as contributions to the educational and service missions of the university.

Miller will accept the honor and give a presentation on her research at 4 p.m. April 20 in the Chancellor’s Hall of the Center for Academic Success and Engagement (CASE). The event is open to the entire campus community, and Miller will discuss a variety of topics including her work on indoor air quality in our homes and the lessons learned about airborne disease transmission during the COVID-19 pandemic that are still broadly applicable.

“My research is easy to understand and applicable to just about everyone. It will not be a technical lecture at all, and my hope is that people will leave with concrete ways to improve their health in relation to air pollution exposure,” she said.

Miller first came to ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder as one of the chancellor’s postdoctoral fellows in 1996 after completing her master’s and PhD in civil and environmental engineering at the University of California, Berkley, and briefly serving as a faculty member there.

Her current research spans a range of topics and includes designing engineering strategies using filtration and germicidal ultraviolet systems for improving indoor environmental quality and identifying sources of air pollutants and noxious odors in urban communities in Denver and along the Front Range. Her work also seeks to improve understanding of air pollution and its association with health effects and wellbeing – particularly in marginalized communities.

She has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles on air quality, authored a chapter on Indoor Air Quality in the Environmental Engineering Handbook and is an associate editor for Environmental Science and Technology.

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, Miller worked with experts on and off campus to better understand the airborne virus as the global death toll climbed in 2020. She had previously conducted research into tuberculosis and infectious disease transmission and – as the pandemic progressed – played a key role nationally and internationally in discussions around how to limit transmission.

One key area of her work in this area was looking into ways to reduce transmission with ventilation and filtration. She said that work is ongoing and that findings there not only saved lives during the pandemic but will also have broad application in areas like design and community health for years to come.

“It was an intense and traumatic time for everyone, but as a scientist in this field it was pretty clear to a lot of us that this was being transmitted through the air – yet no one was listening to us about ways to stop it and save lives,” she said. “Fortunately, I think buildings will now be much healthier in general when it comes to filtration and ventilation to handle chemicals in the air because of what we learned and what the public now understands.”

Throughout her career, Miller has received federal funding for her research program from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Science Foundation, as well as the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and industry sponsors.

The engineering members of ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder's Pandemic Scientific Steering Committee and Science Team: From left, Shelly Miller, Cresten Mansfeldt and Dan Larremore. The team won the 2021 Robert L. Stearns Alumni Award on campus.

Miller has also earned many awards and held multiple leadership roles on campus. The list of honors includes separate research awards from the college and mechanical engineering, as well as the Robert L. Stearns Alumni Award as part of the Pandemic Scientific Steering Committee and Science Team during COVID. She has also served with the Office of Faculty Affairs helping to launch the Academic Leaders Institute and the Shared Perspectives and Community Engagement initiative.

Miller said she has enjoyed her time at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder and was thankful for mentors like professors Jana Milford and John Daily, who helped her along the way. She added that her goal has always been to leave the university a better place than when she arrived.

“That was always the focus of my work – whether it was in research, service or teaching,” she said. “I am grateful and proud of the work I have done here. From connecting with ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ communities to supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion activities and, of course, teaching a whole new generation about indoor air quality and air pollution.”

Rubén Donato, the Bob & Judy Charles Endowed Chair and a professor of Educational Foundations, Policy and Practice in the School of Education was also honored with a ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder Distinguished Research Lectureship in 2022.

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Miller honored by ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Engineering for air quality research

Anonymous — Tue, 17 Jan 2023 22:32:11 +0000

Miller honored by ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Engineering for air quality research Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 01/17/2023 - 15:32

Jeff Zehnder

Shelly Miller has received the 2022 Faculty Research Award from the College of Engineering and Applied Science.

The honor, which is bestowed annually, recognizes achievements by a faculty member who has made outstanding contributions to the advancement of knowledge through research activities.

Miller is a professor in the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Environmental Engineering Program. She is a renowned expert in urban and indoor air quality.

Miller was selected in recognition of her successful work as part of a group of scientists who led national dialogue on the importance of aerosols in the transmission of COVID-19. The award also acknowledges her work addressing problems that impact different communities, including on indoor air quality.

She has been a member of the University of ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder faculty since 1998. Her current research is focused on assessing and designing engineering controls to improve indoor environmental quality through filtration and ultraviolet germicidal irradiation.

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Destroying Coronavirus vs. Creating Indoor Smog

Anonymous — Fri, 16 Dec 2022 17:57:05 +0000

Destroying Coronavirus vs. Creating Indoor Smog Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 12/16/2022 - 10:57

Put people in poorly ventilated rooms, where coronavirus-containing aerosols are trapped in the air with nowhere to go, and their risk of getting COVID-19 skyrockets. Research has shown that you can decrease the risk by ventilating the room and filtering viruses from the air. Now, a new CIRES and ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder-led study helps shine a light on another approach—germicidal ultraviolet light (GUV), which can inactivate airborne pathogens but also has potential to create an unhealthy indoor “smog.” The work, published today in Environmental Science & Technology Letters, finds that after GUV disinfection, the amounts of harmful secondary chemicals in indoor air have a significant but not overwhelming impact, suggesting that GUV can be used to fight the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic in environments at high risk of virus transmission.

“It’s been known for a long time that GUV can kill airborne pathogens. The technique regained attention during the pandemic, but very little was understood about the potential impact of secondary chemistry,” said Zhe Peng, a research scientist with CIRES and the chemistry department at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder and lead author of the paper.

Indoor GUV disinfection inactivates the genetic material of airborne pathogens like SARS-CoV-2. But for the same reasons, it also oxidizes and breaks down ozone and volatile organic compounds, which can lead to the production of secondary chemicals that have negative health effects. Despite the recent push to employ GUV in more indoor spaces, this study is the first to look at the impact of GUV on indoor air quality.

“People have to pay attention to the pros and cons of any air cleaning or disinfection technique before using it,” Peng said. “If GUV kills viruses but also turns airborne VOCs into something more toxic like particulate pollution, then we need to weigh the benefit of reducing pathogens with the increased risk of air pollution.”

Peng and coauthors adapted a computer model that simulates realistic air chemistry to evaluate the impact of GUV on the chemistry of indoor air under typical room conditions. Their work focused on two commonly used wavelengths of GUV—254 nm, which is harmful for people and typically installed near the ceiling or in ventilation ducts, and 222 nm, which some research suggests is safe when shone directly on people, and thus may be usable for whole room exposure.

Schematics of germicidal ultraviolet air disinfection setups at 254 nm and at 222 nm in a room. Credit: Peng et al., 2022

The team found that both wavelengths of GUV triggered the formation of highly oxidizing hydroxyl radicals, which in turn oxidized volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the air. This chemistry resulted in the production of gases and particles that can have negative health impacts. But their results suggest that the concentration of these secondary chemicals was not so large as to be a major concern at present.

“These results give us some more confidence to recommend the use of GUV immediately, given the pandemic and high incidence of the flu and RSV, in high-risk environments such as emergency room waiting areas, restaurants, gyms, choirs, and churches, where there is a high potential for superspreading of airborne pathogens, especially if adding sufficient ventilation and filtration is not feasible” said Jose-Luis Jimenez, CIRES fellow, distinguished professor at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder, and co-author of the paper. “However, in many lower risk settings or during periods of low respiratory disease transmission, we may be better off using simpler techniques such as ventilation and filters, which remove viruses and reduce indoor pollution rather than increase it.”

The authors noted that more work is needed to evaluate the impact of secondary pollutants in different conditions: In some areas, GUV “smog” formation could be problematic, they wrote, and there could be surprises, such as the formation of more toxic pollutants.

Still, co-author and ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder professor Shelly Miller said, the new paper could help inform policy, much as previous work by her and her colleagues, informed CDC’s guidance for GUV use in healthcare settings. “GUV has been used in schools against measles, in hospitals for tuberculosis…” Miller said, “and now for COVID-19.”

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ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder joins White House summit on indoor air quality

Anonymous — Tue, 01 Nov 2022 17:20:16 +0000

ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder joins White House summit on indoor air quality Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 11/01/2022 - 11:20

The challenges of ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ, industrial pollution and vehicle emissions have centered the issue of outdoor air quality in the public consciousness.

With the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and the realization that the pathogen primarily transmits indoors, there has been growing awareness of the importance of indoor air quality, as well.

On Oct. 11, Professor Shelly Miller joined a White House Summit for Indoor Air Quality, sitting on a panel concerning technologies aimed at improving air quality, and advocated for the adoption of a technology underutilized in most buildings: germicidal UV light.

“We use germicidal UV to kill microorganisms. It damages their DNA and RNA, and they can no longer replicate and infect you. We do it in water all the time. But it’s also very, very effective for keeping the air clear of infectious agents,” she explained.

The technology already exists and would be relatively inexpensive to implement on a large scale. But Miller said standard practice treats infectious diseases with antibiotics and disregards other methods of prevention.

“If you get TB, you go to the doctor and they give you antibiotics, and you don't realize that you got TB by being exposed to somebody indoors,” said Miller. In other words, the installation of germicidal UV light in buildings could prevent people from becoming infected in the first place.

If we have the technology, why isn’t it utilized? Part of the problem is lack of public understanding and initiative surrounding the issue.

“There’s a handful of universities in the country that have a class on indoor air pollution, which is not that many,” said Miller, who teaches a class on the topic at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder.

Others on the panel agreed that the public should have more opportunities to know the indoor air quality of any given building that they might enter, be that a restaurant, apartment complex, or hotel. Miller advocated for the use of sensors that are connected to monitors that display air pollution levels, which could be readily available at every entrance to a building.

“You see the PM2.5, you see the VOCs, you see the CO2 levels, and then you think, okay, well, I'm a sensitive person to PM2.5 because I have asthma,” Miller explained. “And then you might make a different choice to eat in that restaurant.”

Ultimately, it’s a matter of changing public perception around the issue of indoor air quality and raising it to the level of seriousness that outdoor air quality receives.

“We need a paradigm shift for thinking about indoor quality,” said Miller. “When we started to regulate and protect the environment in the 70s, we focused on water quality and outdoor air quality because we saw those as public goods. But we never saw the indoor environment as a public good as well. We always see it as a private good.”

The return on investment for improving indoor air quality is well-founded. Panelists said improved indoor air quality would reduce the burden on health care, make workers more productive and reduce student absenteeism.

Miller hopes that the White House Summit on Indoor Air Quality marks the beginning of that paradigm shift and leads to serious investment in and attention to the issue of indoor air quality.

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Miller honored with Distinguished Research Lectureship

Anonymous — Mon, 19 Sep 2022 19:17:28 +0000

Miller honored with Distinguished Research Lectureship Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 09/19/2022 - 13:17

Shelly L. Miller is a professor of Mechanical Engineering and faculty in the Environmental Engineering Program.

Miller received her master’s degree and doctorate in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. She also holds a bachelor’s degree in Applied Mathematics from Harvey Mudd College.

Professor Miller investigates and teaches about urban air quality, focusing on understanding the impact of air pollution on public health and the environment. She is an expert on indoor environmental air quality, including airborne infectious disease transmission and control and air cleaning technologies.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Miller played an influential role on campus and globally through wide-ranging education and communication work to help mitigate the airborne transmission of the virus.

Miller is a member of the Academy of Fellows of the International Society for Indoor Air Quality and Climate (ISIAQ) and is also an associate editor for Environmental Science and Technology. Professor Miller has published over 90 peer reviewed articles on air quality, authored a chapter on Indoor Air Quality in the Environmental Engineering Handbook, and advocates for women in the academy and engineering.

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Miller discusses airborne COVID spread with Eos

Anonymous — Thu, 02 Jun 2022 21:34:34 +0000

Miller discusses airborne COVID spread with Eos Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 06/02/2022 - 15:34

Shelly Miller is interviewed in "Indoor Air Pollution in the Time of Coronavirus", a new long-format piece by Eos, the journal of the American Geophysical Union.

Miller is a professor of mechanical and environmental engineering at the University of ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder and an expert on indoor air quality. She has been a prominent scientific voice in national media during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

The article focuses on how aerosol scientists like Miller have spread the word on airborne transmission of COVID-19, and what it means for cleaning indoor air.

Read the article at Eos...

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Campus pandemic team recognized with ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder award

Anonymous — Thu, 11 Nov 2021 18:49:18 +0000

Campus pandemic team recognized with ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder award Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 11/11/2021 - 11:49

ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder’s Alumni Awards are recognizing a team of faculty and staff for their efforts on the COVID 19 pandemic.

Environmental engineering faculty members Cresten Mansfeldt and Shelly Miller are among a group of employees collectively referred to as the ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder Pandemic Scientific Steering Committee and Science Team (“The Team”) receiving a 2021 Robert L. Stearns Award.

The full list of honorees include Kristen Bjorkman (PhDBioChem’07), Gloria Brisson, Jose Jimenez, Mark Kavanaugh, Daniel Larremore (ApMath’09; PhD’12), Leslie Leinwand, Cresten Mansfeldt,Jennifer McDuffie, Matt McQueen (Psych’96), Shelly Miller,Roy Parker and Melanie Parra.

Most people will forever remember where they were in March 2020 as the world began to shut down. For many at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder, an incredible haul of work instantly followed.

Like the COVID-19 virus, their tasks were new, momentous and immediate.

“I can think of no more difficult year than the one that began on March 13, 2020, and was dominated by COVID-19, its impact on our students, faculty and staff and our institutional response,” said ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder provost Russ Moore.

One group of faculty and staff — the ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder Pandemic Scientific Steering Committee and Science Team, or “The Team” — was set on determining how the university could remain operational during a pandemic.

“Without being asked, and in the true spirit of public service, the members of the Scientific Steering Committee and Science Team dropped what they were doing in order to develop the science and many of the associated operations that allowed our campus to successfully open and operate,” said Moore.

The Team consisted of Kristen Bjorkman, Gloria Brisson, Jose Jimenez, Mark Kavanaugh, Daniel Larremore, Leslie Leinwand, Cresten Mansfeldt, Jennifer McDuffie, Matt McQueen, Shelly Miller, Roy Parker and Melanie Parra. Their priority was the safety of the ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder community and beyond.

Their work was evident in every aspect of campus life.

They developed saliva- and wastewater-based SARS-CoV-2 screening tests to find both individual infections and larger outbreaks on campus. They created a contact tracing program that involved eager students and became one of the most responsive in the state. They helped design the HVAC systems that were installed throughout campus to reduce airborne disease transmission. They guided physical distancing and masking protocols. Most importantly, their solutions were grounded in science.

Their ideas and implementations were constant — sometimes happening from the hours of 2 to 4 a.m. or on weekends. The work is not done. Much of The Team’s scientific work will be studied, reviewed and published to help future crisis response practices.

In the words of the provost, speaking on behalf of thousands positively impacted by their work, “The Team’s dedication serves as an inspiration to us all.”

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8Mozkke6GY]

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Simple safety measures reduce musical COVID-19 transmission

Anonymous — Fri, 27 Aug 2021 15:28:40 +0000

Simple safety measures reduce musical COVID-19 transmission Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 08/27/2021 - 09:28

As the COVID-19 pandemic swept the globe in 2020, musicians around the world were desperate for the answers to two pressing questions: Can playing musical instruments transmit COVID-19? And if so, what can be done?

Now, halfway through 2021, the first official research results are in—and it’s good news: The show can go on.

Published today in the journal ACS Environmental Au, University of ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder and University of Maryland researchers have found that while playing musical instruments can emit the same levels of potentially COVID-laden airborne particles as singing, simple safety measures, such as masking instruments, social distancing and implementing time limits, significantly reduce this risk.

Graduate student Teyha Stockman places a homemade bell cover made from medical mask material to test for the effectiveness of lowering aerosols in Shelly Miller's mechanical engineering laboratory on the ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder campus. (Credit: Glenn Asakawa / ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder)

“COVID has shown people that aerosol transmission of respiratory diseases is something that happens. But just because it goes into the air doesn't mean that everyone is going to contract this disease. We found that there are ways to mitigate these aerosols in a space and ways to reduce your risk,” said Tehya Stockman, lead author of the paper and graduate student in mechanical engineering.

This research began in earnest in 2020 at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder and the University of Maryland to find out if playing musical instruments carried the same risks of COVID-19 transmission as singing is shown to have. While there have been no reported outbreaks from instrumental ensembles, these published findings echo the researchers’ initial hypotheses and recommendations that were eagerly accepted early on in the pandemic by musicians and performing groups worldwide.

“I want to acknowledge the courage of the music directors and the teachers to go ahead and follow our suggestions in the face of all of this adversity, fear and worry,” said Shelly Miller, co-author of the study and professor of mechanical and environmental engineering. “That really meant a lot to us because they trusted our very good research methods, our researchers, and the evolution of science as it moves from: we don't know, to, let's find out, to OK—now we know this.”

These findings not only apply to the specific musical applications in which they have been tested, they also further validate that masking works as an effective mitigation technique, and ventilation and social distancing are important to reduce transmission, said Miller. Miller said she hopes these findings will further inspire a paradigm shift focused on mitigation measures and ventilation in order to reduce airborne transmission of infectious diseases.

Mitigation matters

The researchers tested three mitigation strategies on a variety of woodwind, reed and brass instruments, as well as with two singers and an actor. They evaluated these strategies, different lengths of performance time, and the differences between indoor and outdoor locations by measuring aerosols, carbon dioxide levels, and visualizing the flow of the air using various modeling techniques.

First, they found that masks work—even on instruments—and the quality of the filtering material and their fit are important. Masks worn securely over a singer’s mouth and nose, as well as bell covers (made of MERV13 filter material) placed over the ends of instruments significantly decreased the speed and amount of particles produced from both sources.

For woodwind and reed instruments, they found that the amount of air that escapes from the keyholes does not significantly contribute to any increased risk. This means that clarinetists and flautists do not have to place a bag around their entire instrument to play safely.

Second, time together matters. To keep risk low (at 10% chance of transmission), instrumentalists should spend less than 30 minutes indoors and less than 60 minutes outdoors playing together at a time. No matter the amount of social distancing, “infection risk continuously increases with the duration regardless of the distance to the singer or the player,” the researchers found.

They also found that spacing out does pay off: Leaving several feet of distance between players and singers reduces aerosol concentrations, which are highest closest to each person producing them. And while playing outdoors is best, a layered approach with all the other mitigation measures makes it much safer to play indoors.

Finally, no Plexiglass or face shields are needed. The airborne particles that transmit COVID-19 can easily flow around these barriers and mix with the air in a room.

Quantifying carbon dioxide

Maddie Levinson, a ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder graduate, started sewing COVID-friendly French horn covers for school band programs across the state in 2020. Published research now confirms that using bell covers made of high quality, MERV13 filter material significantly decreases the speed and amount of potentially COVID-laden particles produced from music instruments. (Credit: Maddie Levinson)

So how then, can a musician or audience member now know it’s safe to attend a concert?

Carbon dioxide has been shown to be great indicator of how well ventilated—or not—an indoor space is, and therefore its level of risk for catching COVID-19.

But in this study, the researchers showed that when somebody wears a mask, carbon dioxide passes through the mask with the air that a person is exhaling, but the particles which can carry the virus get stuck. This means that when someone puts on a mask or a bell cover, the carbon dioxide emissions continue, but the particle emissions (which could carry the virus) are reduced.

“Carbon dioxide concentration is a measure of the ventilation in the room. But if everybody's wearing a mask, the carbon dioxide in that room is still going to be high, but the respiratory droplets that may contain the virus are going to be much lower,” Marina Vance, co-author on the study and assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Environmental Engineering Program. “So in that case, it’s not a direct representation of your risk.”

So, if a concert hall requires all audience members to wear masks and that all performers place a bell cover on their instrument, the risk of COVID transmission in that room would be reduced—even if the measured carbon dioxide levels are high. But carbon dioxide is still a great proxy for risk indoors in restaurants, where most people are not masked and are often speaking loudly.

Such direct application of this research to real-life scenarios has been an extremely rewarding experience for Vance and the other researchers.

“The best part of the study was that all of this technical knowledge and all of this scientific understanding was getting translated almost in real-time and getting into the hands of the people that needed it the most. I've never been a part of anything like that,” said Vance. “It was nerve-wracking, exciting and important all at once.”

The safe return of music

When lead author Stockman first learned to play clarinet years ago, she didn’t do so with the intent to advance scientific research. But her personal musical experience allowed the work to advance quickly, as she performed calibration tests by herself in the lab during the pandemic.

She understands the frustrations of musicians who may need to follow these protocols. She also knows how important it is to keep people safe.

“What we've shown is that there's easy measures to take that make life still be relatively normal—and you don't have to fear the air,” said Stockman.

This sentiment is echoed by co-authors Mark Spede, National President of the College Band Directors National Association and Director of Bands at Clemson University, and James Weaver, Director of Performing Arts and Sports for the National Federation of State High School Associations, who point out that the mitigation strategies tested in this study can be implemented not only during the lingering COVID-19 pandemic, but in the face of any future pathogen that may come along.

“Although we may not know how the end of the pandemic will play out, this important study has allowed performing arts educators to advocate for the safe return of live music to the classroom,” said Spede.

This research was conducted in partnership and collaboration with the National Federation of State High School Associations and College Band Directors National Association.

Additional authors on this publication include: Abhishek Kuma, Lingzhe Wang, Sameer Patel, Darin Toohey and Jean Hertzberg of ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder; and Shengwei Zhu, Don Milton and Jelena Srebric of the University of Maryland.

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