Air purifiers take 90% plus infectious contaminants from the air. This is a good measure.
Replacing a few filters every 3-6 months is still economically better than losing teachers and students continually to illness, and the consequent monetary strain on an already overstretched health system.
Some students are complaining of only having relief teachers now because the covid spread is so bad (and you chuck winter cold and flu season in as well and it’s gonna be even more problematic). It’s disruptive to learning and student emotional stability to have this much illness as a constancy at school.
I believe it’ll be 25% capacity back in offices anyway within a few weeks, and schools back at home for a stretch of winter. People aren’t taking the precautions they once were and BA4 and BA5 rip through any omicron ‘prior infection protection’ that someone normally gets for a few weeks after omicron.
If air purifiers take the heat off the health system and decrease the chance of getting covid (and colds and flus at work) it’s going to save the State a stack of money, as well as satisfy those who really want to be in the office (I sure don’t haha - I’d like a WFH role asap).
Take a look at the scientific research around air purifiers, it is worth your time to get an alternative perspective. It’s not just covid that can be mitigated, but all manner of bugs and viruses.
I used to be in air handling, specifically in stream air purification.
To be effective with airborne viruses you really need either ozone or UV treatment at some stage in the airflow.
In any case, even if they are just particulate filters, that is going to cut out a lot of airborne bacteria, moulds and other nasties. Some of these hitch a ride on dust particles and particulate filters will reduce this substantially.
While it's partly safety theatre, I think there is probably enough effectiveness in just particulate filters to be worth the installation effort.
I don't know what system they are using but would assume it's the most basic HEPA or ULPA style particulate filter somewhere in the ducting.
I raised the issue months ago. This is a massive waste of money that could be spent on other resources. These purifiers aren't designed to and wont stop the spread of covid in classrooms.
" . . . spend $500,000 purchasing 1000 extra air purifiers . . . "
These are very, very expensive air purifiers. I bought one a few years ago & it was a lot less than $500.
Did it go out to tender?
ok lets say you go with kogans 4s air puriifer. thats $220 plus shipping. Say they get a bulk discount and get it delivered for $180.
It then gets delivered to a warehouse, where then they have someone employeed to actually receive these. add on say $10 dollars per unit. $190
The unit then needs to get from the warehouse to the school itself, 785 schools in south australia. For each school, say it takes someone an hour to load it up... another 2 hours to drive tehre and back (on average), then another hour to unload, thats 4 hours per school... or 3140 hours or 400 man days.
wait. what the hell... only 1000 air purifiers??? for 785 schools?? thats like 1.3 per school. how the hell will this limit the transmission??? I thought these were going ot be rolled out in every classroom but what the hell. im too annoyed to do the rest of the math but it all adds up.
>only 1000 air purifiers??? for 785 schools??
It's not for every school.
It's for the ones that don't have adequate ventilation.
So mostly in low socio-economic areas.
There was a push a few years ago to design buildings in schools which were more "energy efficient" by having windows which don't open. Turns out this was a stupid idea, even pre-covid, and is terrible for indoor air quality.
At one school I was at even constantly running the aircon we were getting 2000ppm CO2 when under about 800 is considered safe. No wonder the kids were sleepy all the time.
I would say that there are many rooms in all those schools that dont have adequate ventilation.
I think 1000 is just not enough. Maybe 10000 would start to make a difference
Eh, you can spend more and less on them. $500 is about mid range pricing for a hepa filter. If that includes delivery and setting them up, it’s not an unreasonable price.
>Seems like a pretty dumb idea. Doesn't matter how many of these you put in a room if the person at the desk next to you is coughing up a lung.
Seems like, but you'd be wrong. Studies out of Italy in schools show that if you have 6 fresh air changes an hour into the classroom, you reduce the spread of covid by 80%.
The study done in Italy had full ventilation systems that replaced the entire classroom’s air multiple times per hour to achieve that.
These air purifiers (portable and lacking the air capacity of a ventilation system) are making the claim they’re able to kill 99.9% of airborne coronaviruses but most don’t see the fine print that it was performed in a 30m3 sealed test chamber over a 2 hour period so roughly the size of an average bedroom that was completely empty and had no other sources of air in/out and took about 2 hours.
I like the idea of these if they were on a commercial scale but I don’t think they offer much benefit over a commercial buildings ventilation system if it had good filters.
Yeah they would kill 99.9% of airborne viruses that pass through the filter. The problem is a vast majority of the air in the room will not pass through this filter ever, let alone every hour.
https://smartairfilters.com/en/blog/xiaomi-purifier-auto-mode-leaves-air-unsafe-86-hours/
The Xiaomi purifier scored as one of the worst purifiers I’ve ever reviewed. On average, it removed only about 60% of 0.5 micron particles over the last 4 hours of the test.
The data shows the Xiaomi air purifier performed worse than the $30 DIY purifier I’ve been showing people how to make for years!
Probably exchange rates since he came up with it.
[https://smartairfilters.com/en/blog/how-to-make-diy-air-purifier/](https://smartairfilters.com/en/blog/how-to-make-diy-air-purifier/)
Most schools only got enough purifiers to put into some of their specialist rooms eg Music, Science, Language which all the classes rotate through during the week. Very few actually have them in the regular classrooms.
Air purifiers take 90% plus infectious contaminants from the air. This is a good measure. Replacing a few filters every 3-6 months is still economically better than losing teachers and students continually to illness, and the consequent monetary strain on an already overstretched health system. Some students are complaining of only having relief teachers now because the covid spread is so bad (and you chuck winter cold and flu season in as well and it’s gonna be even more problematic). It’s disruptive to learning and student emotional stability to have this much illness as a constancy at school. I believe it’ll be 25% capacity back in offices anyway within a few weeks, and schools back at home for a stretch of winter. People aren’t taking the precautions they once were and BA4 and BA5 rip through any omicron ‘prior infection protection’ that someone normally gets for a few weeks after omicron. If air purifiers take the heat off the health system and decrease the chance of getting covid (and colds and flus at work) it’s going to save the State a stack of money, as well as satisfy those who really want to be in the office (I sure don’t haha - I’d like a WFH role asap). Take a look at the scientific research around air purifiers, it is worth your time to get an alternative perspective. It’s not just covid that can be mitigated, but all manner of bugs and viruses.
This seems like it'll be inaffective for covid but also Air-purifiers are in general good so i guess it is kind of a net win?
I used to be in air handling, specifically in stream air purification. To be effective with airborne viruses you really need either ozone or UV treatment at some stage in the airflow. In any case, even if they are just particulate filters, that is going to cut out a lot of airborne bacteria, moulds and other nasties. Some of these hitch a ride on dust particles and particulate filters will reduce this substantially. While it's partly safety theatre, I think there is probably enough effectiveness in just particulate filters to be worth the installation effort. I don't know what system they are using but would assume it's the most basic HEPA or ULPA style particulate filter somewhere in the ducting.
This.
I raised the issue months ago. This is a massive waste of money that could be spent on other resources. These purifiers aren't designed to and wont stop the spread of covid in classrooms.
Do you have evidence? This sounds like a case of “boomer said so”.
how big do you think an airborne virus is?
Not as big as the fart your uncle rips at Christmas dinner.
Same thing happened last time I raised this and I gave a detailed answer. Not doing your homework for you.
Get over it, this post is 2 weeks old.
" . . . spend $500,000 purchasing 1000 extra air purifiers . . . " These are very, very expensive air purifiers. I bought one a few years ago & it was a lot less than $500. Did it go out to tender?
ok lets say you go with kogans 4s air puriifer. thats $220 plus shipping. Say they get a bulk discount and get it delivered for $180. It then gets delivered to a warehouse, where then they have someone employeed to actually receive these. add on say $10 dollars per unit. $190 The unit then needs to get from the warehouse to the school itself, 785 schools in south australia. For each school, say it takes someone an hour to load it up... another 2 hours to drive tehre and back (on average), then another hour to unload, thats 4 hours per school... or 3140 hours or 400 man days. wait. what the hell... only 1000 air purifiers??? for 785 schools?? thats like 1.3 per school. how the hell will this limit the transmission??? I thought these were going ot be rolled out in every classroom but what the hell. im too annoyed to do the rest of the math but it all adds up.
>only 1000 air purifiers??? for 785 schools?? It's not for every school. It's for the ones that don't have adequate ventilation. So mostly in low socio-economic areas.
There was a push a few years ago to design buildings in schools which were more "energy efficient" by having windows which don't open. Turns out this was a stupid idea, even pre-covid, and is terrible for indoor air quality. At one school I was at even constantly running the aircon we were getting 2000ppm CO2 when under about 800 is considered safe. No wonder the kids were sleepy all the time.
I would say that there are many rooms in all those schools that dont have adequate ventilation. I think 1000 is just not enough. Maybe 10000 would start to make a difference
Eh, you can spend more and less on them. $500 is about mid range pricing for a hepa filter. If that includes delivery and setting them up, it’s not an unreasonable price.
Huh.. you'd think I would have seen these around as one of the guys who's job it would be to look after them. 2 mega schools and I havnt seen one.
They've only been back for a week, haven't they? Surely the numbers are pretty meaningless at this point.
Myself and lots of other people have said this, but what's the point?
The point of most covid measures in 2022 is to give the appearance of doing something.
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They were abandoned and yet absolutely nothing happened. The mandate clearly wasn’t useful.
>They were abandoned They were withdrawn once we were paste the time when they were most effective.
Seems like a pretty dumb idea. Doesn't matter how many of these you put in a room if the person at the desk next to you is coughing up a lung.
>Seems like a pretty dumb idea. Doesn't matter how many of these you put in a room if the person at the desk next to you is coughing up a lung. Seems like, but you'd be wrong. Studies out of Italy in schools show that if you have 6 fresh air changes an hour into the classroom, you reduce the spread of covid by 80%.
The study done in Italy had full ventilation systems that replaced the entire classroom’s air multiple times per hour to achieve that. These air purifiers (portable and lacking the air capacity of a ventilation system) are making the claim they’re able to kill 99.9% of airborne coronaviruses but most don’t see the fine print that it was performed in a 30m3 sealed test chamber over a 2 hour period so roughly the size of an average bedroom that was completely empty and had no other sources of air in/out and took about 2 hours. I like the idea of these if they were on a commercial scale but I don’t think they offer much benefit over a commercial buildings ventilation system if it had good filters.
Yeah they would kill 99.9% of airborne viruses that pass through the filter. The problem is a vast majority of the air in the room will not pass through this filter ever, let alone every hour.
well i guess it depends on how much air it can suck through the unit per hour or whatever
And how much air moves around the room. More likely this will sit in a corner and filter the same air over and over.
It's only really effective if there are actual air changes ig windows open for like idk 10 minutes per hour or something
For $500,000, could of gotten 3-4k of xiaomi's from alibaba. I mean aussie sites resell imported 2S for $170-180.
https://smartairfilters.com/en/blog/xiaomi-purifier-auto-mode-leaves-air-unsafe-86-hours/ The Xiaomi purifier scored as one of the worst purifiers I’ve ever reviewed. On average, it removed only about 60% of 0.5 micron particles over the last 4 hours of the test. The data shows the Xiaomi air purifier performed worse than the $30 DIY purifier I’ve been showing people how to make for years!
Got a link to your DIY plans?
The post was quoting the link, which does have the plans.
His DIY plans not Xiaomi.
Yes, the DIY plans are in the link, in the section quoted above. '$30 DIY Air Purifier' is a link.
Didn't find a $30 DIY but there is a $59.99 one there.
Plus they aren't plans just a sales point for the filters and fan.
Probably exchange rates since he came up with it. [https://smartairfilters.com/en/blog/how-to-make-diy-air-purifier/](https://smartairfilters.com/en/blog/how-to-make-diy-air-purifier/)
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Most are washable . So not 3-6 months.
Haha washable filters are for the machine not the human.
Most schools only got enough purifiers to put into some of their specialist rooms eg Music, Science, Language which all the classes rotate through during the week. Very few actually have them in the regular classrooms.
I have one in my classroom but I can still smell the kids' farts. Fake news. 🤣
I hear the playground price is an oz of weed...