Building Design + Construction: The engineering firm NV5, which provides third-party verification on WELL v2 projects for the Green Business Certification Institute, has been recommending to its clients Safe Traces, a solution that uses DNA-based sprays and sensors to verify engineering and HVAC controls for airborne contaminants. Its veriDART control verification uses “aerosol mobility indicators” to identify hotspots, assess ventilation and filtration, and inform remediations.
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I honestly couldn't believe the headline when I first saw this, and then read the article and continued to remain surprised! Who knew the Carnegie Mellon School of Haze was actually looking out for our health and safety long before we even knew it! In short, Grignard, a company that manufacturer that makes haze and fog fluids, was asked to do a health and safety assessment of the chemicals that they were using in their solutions and their effect on audience members. They ultimately found that all the ingredients, including triethylene glycol (TEG), were safe. Out of what appears to be shear coincidence, TEG now looks like an effective airborne treatment for viruses such as COVID-19, and has even been granted emergency approval for this application. And the thing is its not just effective, it looks like it is massively impactful even after just one minute of exposure. Given all the research that has gone into fighting COVID, who would have thought that one solution was under (and often inside) our noses all along.
All I'm reading is an excuse to keep pumping more haze in to every show that we do. Kidding, but only sort of. It's pretty fascinating to me that solutions and treatments can often exist long before a problem becomes a problem, and then the challenge then becomes finding and implementing research and development that has already been done. That being said, I'm a little hesitant about the immediate applications of this discovery. Seeing a haze in the air almost never has a good connotation or cause, and in some cases it means fumigation, fire, or any kind of "get the hell away from here." Implementation of theatrical haze-like substances in any public place would need to be done carefully and tactfully so as to inform the public of what the substance in the air is. But either way, it's pretty awesome that this connection has been identified and can hopefully be acted on.
This is actually super exciting to me as someone in the lighting department at the CMU School of Haze. I was actually pretty worried about the future of haze in theatres as we navigate reopening in a safe manner because I just assumed it would cause problems in terms of COVID guidelines. Haze is such an integral part of so many lighting designs and it would be really interesting to see how lighting design changed to not include haze for the time being as we move back into a normal theatre setting. But I am extremely glad that not only is it not a problem, but it can also be part of the solution! This just seems like a huge excuse to pump even more haze into the space and say we’re doing it because of COVID. All jokes aside, this could potentially become a key part of reopening in a safe way and it would be so simple to do because it is something that is normally done anyways. I am excited to see how theatres and lighting designers use this information to their advantage.
The idea of having an HVAC system embedded with some sort of disinfectant fluid that is an idea that definitely sounds good on paper. What would you not want the air to be constantly cleaned or viruses and bacteria? I think there are certainly so obvious repercussions to having this type of setup. My gut says the costs outweigh the benefits, but I guess that’s something to be discovered. My first thought is that constantly having air full of disinfectant is a prime way to quickly and efficiently create new strains on viruses or bacteria that are resistant to our more safe disinfectants, leading us to have to up the potency to keep it effective. The balance to that is the difficulty in having something potent enough to kill organisms in the air that also doesn’t kill us, or even damage any part of us. We know breathing in basically anything is bad and I can’t imagine that the stuff meant to kill viruses is good for your insides (or even your outsides.)
This article caught me by surprise. In my mind, it seems like atmospheric haze would be the opposite of an anti-microbial – for some reason, logic tells me that because I can see it in the air, it would make an excellent disease vector as opposed to a disease killer. To my pleasant surprise, this line of reasoning, in this case, is false. I do know that in general, haze is made up of at least water and glycerin, but I was unaware of this triethylene glycol additive. I am not sure the actual function in serves in haze generation, but its antimicrobial properties are the main focus I have taken an interest in. The triethylene glycol, when aerosolized in haze, is incredibly effective at deactivating COVID-19 virus strains, knocking out over 98% in just one minute. If that rate of decay continues, the amount of COVID-19 particles in the air will be negligible in only about ten minutes, and nearly eradicated by the half hour or hour mark. This is insane – for a space with an enclosed volume as large as a Broadway house, this technology will be incredible useful in the gradual reopening of these venues. On top of that, haze is already often utilized in shows, which will make it blend right in. That being said, I do wonder if it is effective at lower concentrations, where the haze is not actually visible, as this would make it easier to integrate into places that do not usually see haze in the air.
I literally cackled when I read this headline. I have always been really into haze, probably to a slightly hazardous degree, so this is amazing news! But in all seriousness, this seems like a great, atmospheric way to reduce COVID risks. Maybe it’s just that I can’t actually see it working, but I am always skeptical of COVID precautions like this. Masks, disinfectant and hand washing are all so tangible. But just pumping in haze to disinfect the air (which is definitely not how it actually works, I just can’t wrap my head around it) is so nebulous. I would be really interested to see COVID data with identical facilities except one was equipped with a proper HVAC system and this magical haze and one was not. I promise I’m not a COVID denier, I just would love to understand the “nitty gritty” of how it works.
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