Schools Turning to Air Quality Technology to Combat COVID-19

Organizations continue to search for solutions to protect people against COVID-19. That includes school districts. Through the help of federal funding, Sioux Falls and Bridgewater-Emery school districts recently installed coronavirus deterring air technology in all their facilities.

The goal is to create a healthier indoor environment. According to the company AtmosAir, their patented bi-polar ionization technology is over 99 percent effective in neutralizing coronavirus.

This is how it works:

“As air passes over these tubes there’s an electronic field that’s around this that ionizes the oxygen, hydrogen molecules. And now they are ionized and they go off into the space to not only clean the air but the surfaces in the occupant space,” said Kevin Eggert, Sales Engineer for Mechanical Sales Inc. SD of Sioux Falls. The company is the local AtmosAir representative and managed the installation of the systems.

The ions basically stick to the pointy spikes of the coronavirus making it harmless.

Depending on the size of the school, Eggert says there could be 10 to 20 of these devices installed throughout the HVAC air system. With each one costing between $500 to $1,000.

The Bridgewater-Emery school district had the technology installed a couple of months ago.

“As superintendent, I think it’s important to have kids in school and we want to do everything we can to mitigate the coronavirus to try to keep our staff and students healthy,” said Jason Bailey, Superintendent for Bridgewater-Emery Schools.

Bailey says so far everything is going well.

“I feel very fortunate that we haven’t had any spread that we know of in the school and our coronavirus cases have been minimal.”

He also has his eye set on the future and how this technology could benefit students and faculty for years to come.

“We thought when coronavirus is gone, air quality is just important all the time for kids and we thought it was going to be an asset to our school district,” said Bailey.

Besides schools, many other places are also implementing this technology such as airports, hospitals, grocery stores, and convention centers.

You can even install it in your home. Depending on the size of the home it would cost between $500 to $1,000.

For more information click here.