Air purifiers can play an important safety role

During the worldwide pandemic, one area has been vexed perhaps more than others in terms of openings and closings, of starts and stops, of operations and ineffectiveness: educational institutions. Particularly in the United States, school districts have grappled with the realities of COVID-19—namely that it is extremely difficult to provide adequate educational services to a population that can contract the disease. What’s more, the facilitators of educational services—teachers, aides, administrators and support staff—are also greatly affected and hampered by districts’ inability to provide a safe environment.

Many districts began by locking down schools and resorting to online learning, but that soon gave way to hybrid learning environments, where certain students learned from home on scheduled days, while others attended class with limited occupancy. And, in some cases, some districts defied mandates and hosted in-person class attendance, often with mixed results that required migrating back to virtual learning because of contaminations and infection.

While some districts have become more aggressive with their disinfecting and cleaning techniques, one thing remains clear: ongoing success in bringing kids back to in-person classroom learning will rely on incorporating air purification.

Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health releases recommendations

That’s borne out by work done by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. It’s put together a guide to checking the ventilation rates in classrooms—acknowledging that proper ventilation is a key to allowing students a safe learning environment. It also worked with Colorado University to put together a calculator to determine what type of air cleaner to size for different school rooms.

That’s because the School of Public Health also recommends augmenting classroom spaces with portable air purification units equipped with HEPA filters in instances where ventilation isn’t sufficient.

For example, AeraMax Professional complete line of commercial-grade air purifiers uses a unique four-stage system involving HEPA filtration to remove up to 99.97 percent of airborne contaminants, like viruses, flu, allergens, bacteria and odors, from classroom settings and other enclosed spaces.

Incorporating air cleaning via standalone air purifiers is an approach taken by a number of AeraMax Professional client school districts like Clarke County School District in Georgia which focused on air cleaning to improve the overall health of students and staff. The district incorporated AeraMax Professional air purifiers as part of an overhaul of its cleaning methods, making for a safer environment for all.