ACC, Inc.
for
Airborne Contamination Control Systems
Delivering the Safest Air to Hospitals –
Or Anywhere You Need It
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Airborne Contamination Control
The Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta (CDC) is
continually pushing to reduce potential infection/contamination hazards found
in health care facilities. Over the
years, many changes in infection control protocol have been made. One of the areas in a healthcare facility
that is wrought with potential exposure hazards is an isolation room. To effectively reduce exposure hazards in
these areas, the CDC requires the volume of air located in these areas to be
replaced multiple times per hour. This
provides a dilution effect that reduces the potential exposure hazards to
healthcare workers. The CDC has
consistently pushed for more air changes per hour in these areas to increase
the safety margin. At one time the CDC
recommended 6 air changes per hour in an isolation room, today the requirement
is 12. These ever-increasing standards
come with ever-increasing installation and operational costs. Current regulations require that the air
used to achieve multiple air changes per hour be pulled from the outside of the
facility, pass through the isolation area and then be exhausted back to the
outside of the facility. This procedure
directly and substantially increases the amount of energy required to condition
the air which also directly impacts your bottom line. Ever-increasing energy costs are here to stay. Airborne Contamination Control, Inc. (ACC)
has been working on air quality issues for several decades, and has developed a
new, proven concept that allows most of the conditioned air to safely be
reused, effectively eliminating the need to exhaust the air to the outside and
waste the energy used to condition it.
This patented technology is currently deployed in several California hospitals. Those who use it are seeing reduced
operational costs and improved air quality.
Introducing the HAZVAC III
The HAZVAC III vacuum is a revolutionary concept for
capturing and containing hazardous dry particulates. This concept was
originally developed to contain hazardous particles in a food processing
facility. After years of practical
application, research and refinement, this device has been adapted to safely
clean face-loaded, specially designed isolation room air filters and greatly
extend their useful life. We discovered
many years ago that hospitals and burn centers have huge amounts of lint in the
air from linens, clothing, bandages, blankets and many other sources. So we prepared the capture filter to face
load the lint in order that we could safely vacuum the lint often with our
HAZ/VAC IIl. The small amounts of
micro-organisms that are within the lint don’t load the filter for a very long
time. Because of the van der Waals
force the filter will eventually need to be changed. The magnehelic gauge that monitors the filter resistance tells us
when and if this needs to be done. This
procedure extends the life of our HEPA filters and saves service time. The captured material removed from these
filters could contain hazardous pathogens that may be infectious in a hospital
environment. The HazVac III is the only vacuum available which provides a
method for disposal of hazardous contents from the vacuum safely without the
operator wearing a respirator. David
Kaiser of ACC has been working with air quality issues for more than 30 years,
and has been the driving force behind the development of the HAZVAC III – which
can be safely and conveniently used just about anywhere to remove a wide
variety of dry, hazardous particulates including beryllium dust and bacteria. A negative force is maintained at the bottom
of the capture receptacle during bag replacement. All dust captured is double HEPA- filtered to insure operator
safety. Each filter is tested and certified
to meet HEPA filter efficiency of 99.97 on 0.3 micron or better.
SINGLE-PASS DILUTION vs.
SINGLE-DIRECTIONAL FLOW
Prior to 1995, California hospital isolation rooms utilized
single-pass airflow ventilation systems to dilute airborne contaminates. All air used in an isolation room had to be
exhausted to the exterior of the building after only a single pass. This method
was predicated on any contaminants that might be present in the air being
diluted and exhausted out of the building.
This approach, though costly to build and maintain, does minimize
airborne contamination concentrations for healthcare workers. At the same time, however, this process
greatly increases the energy required to continuously condition more air to
replace the exhausted, contaminated air. In this time of dramatically
increasing energy costs, the old concept is proving to be excessively costly.
Aside from operational costs, alternate ventilation systems
were not accepted for a variety of reasons.
At that time, HEPA (High Efficiency Particulate Air) filtration, for
instance, had not attained industry acceptance as complying with rigorous
quality standards. It was generally
held that HEPA filters could not capture and contain small particulates – such
as Tuberculosis bacteria (1-5 microns).
Work by ACC, and supported by the CDC, has shown that HEPA
filtration can remove 0.3 micron particulates at greater than 99.97%
efficiency, per Federal Standard 209E.
The Need for Better Air
Filtration
Even though the single pass/dilution airflow concept is commonly
used today, it has inherent safety issues.
It can be dangerous because of its reliance on a standard ASHRAE rated
filter. This air is routinely passed into critical environments without the
benefit of HEPA filtration. In hospital
settings, such as an isolation room, patients with diminished or suppressed
immune systems – or even burn victims – need clean, circulated air. The single-pass/dilution airflow method
unnecessarily exposes these patients to a litany of potentially dangerous
pathogens that might naturally be in the air surrounding a medical facility.
In 1994, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) published
procedures for controlling the spread of tuberculosis[1].
This publication contains important contributions by Robert T. Hughes,
PE; who also worked in association with NIOSH – The National Institute of
Occupational Safety and Health. He was also a contributor to the publication Industrial Ventilation - A Manual of
Recommended Practice for the American Conference of Governmental industrial
Hygienist[2]. Mr. Hughes developed several concepts in air
quality management. His three designs
illustrated in the CDC publication were great concepts and improved the
dilution system. His designs include:
- An
improvement in concepts using HEPA quality filtration in confined spaces;
- A
Dilution Table, which provides a easy and efficient method of calculating
removal efficiencies and time required to dilute airborne contamination[3];
- A
modification to existing exhaust stacks to prevent re-entrainment of
exhausted, contaminated air which could come back into the building[4].
More Reasons for Single Direction
– Airflow in Hospitals
Figure 1: Negative
Air Isolation Room.
Year after year, federal regulators have tightened requirements for air changes per hour in isolation rooms in an effort to improve safety for health care providers. The standard, approved method has been to dilute the contamination in every hospital’s environment. Dilution requirements, achieved by air changes per hour, have increased over time. In the past, 6 changes per hour were deemed sufficient. This requirement has since been increased to 10 and now 12 changes per hour. ACC’s system provides 20 or more air changes per hour. Attached to this paper is a letter written by the State of California validating twenty or more air changes per hour.
Maintenance is another issue that is addressed by the ACC
solution. Maintenance workers do not
like to handle dirty and contaminated filters.
Liability can be ascribed to the person or company that asks someone to
remove old filters – financial liability can be an issue if the person
experiences a contamination hazard on the job.
ACC’s solutions can reduce handling contaminated air filters hazards by
95% or more. Why? How?
All hospital’s environments produce lots of lint – mostly from bedding,
clothes, pillows, bandages, gowns, paper products, etc. An ACC system installed 10 years ago at
Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara, CA (in a TB isolation room) has the face of
its filters vacuumed each week. To
date, the hospital still has the original filters and the maintenance people
love us! The Hospital is willing to
provide testament on how pleased they are with our solution.
Our solution provides a double HEPA filtered system. This is a higher standard than any hospital
operation room. All the air moves
across the room in one direction and is captured immediately behind the
patient’s head. Other systems dilute
the contamination, whereas we capture and remove the contaminants per HEPA
filter standards, drastically reducing contaminate exposure risks for health
care workers!
Our system allows the engineering department to continually
reuse most of the conditioned air. This
reduces the demand on HVAC systems and can save money in design, installation
and ongoing operations and maintenance.
The single pass air system is getting very expensive to maintain and
operate. The centralized HVAC systems
also don’t always scale to higher throughputs.
When the CDC asks for more air changes per hour, an ACC system can
easily be adjusted to comply. Finally,
air exhausted to the exterior of the building from an ACC system will be safe
for all concerned. This again reduces
potential liability.
More on the History of the HAZVAC
III
Mr. Hughes, after developing three new concepts in air
quality control, was approached by David Kaiser, seeking collaboration on the
new vector filter technology. Hughes
was aware of David Kaiser’s efforts to improve air quality systems, and
together they agreed on enhancing the airflow concept with newly developed
vector filtration media that would greatly advance air purification technology.
David Kaiser extended Mr. Hughes’ filter concepts,
developing a totally new methodology for air quality enhancement and
mycobacterium removal/capture. Working
together, both Hughes and Kaiser agreed that the combination of the airflow
concept with the newly developed vector filtration media would prove to be an
advance in air purification technology and air quality management.
Figure 2: The
Haz/Vac III.
Dave Kaiser created the Single-Direction Air Flow and
filtration concept from the combination of these two technologies. He took it to California's 'Organization for
Statewide Health Planning and Development’ (OSHPD). They were presented with a schematic of his new concept and for
comparison, a schematic of an existing isolation room concept that OSHPD had
approved in 1963 for Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara, CA. Mr. Kaiser was informed that his new design
was in violation of the existing State codes for such facilities. ACC organized a call with the California
OSHPD and a CDC doctor specializing in respiratory care. The CDC doctor assured OSHPD that a HEPA
filter would effectively capture 99.97% of all bacteria 0.3 microns and larger
which includes TB bacteria (1 to 5 microns) present in the air.
OSHPD submitted a letter to David Kaiser on December 8,
1995, approving the use of the new air quality control concept for California
hospital isolation room[5].
The OSHPD calls the approved concept “Bio-Safe T Zone III Uni-Directional
Airflow HEPA Filtration System”. We
call it the ‘BIO-SAFE T ZONE III’. Figure shows the room
layout – from a high, wall to wall supply on one side of the room, the clean
air flows in ONE and ONLY direction.
This single-direction flow provides contamination-free air for all
healthcare providers that enter the room.
The only other alternative is diluted contamination.
ACC has installed the “Bio-Safe T Zone III System” in
multiple isolation room facilities in California under the watchful eye of
OSHPD since the approval of their proprietary process.
In one specific case ACC was able to reduce the pathogen
removal/dilution time from around 5 hours (300 minutes) to less than 60
seconds.
ACC’s advanced air quality management concept satisfies the
CDC requirement by increasing the number of air changes per hour to 20 or more
in an isolation facility without significantly increasing energy costs. For
years the CDC recommended 6 air changes an hour in isolation rooms. That requirement has since been raised to 12
air changes per hour. One ASHRAE
publication suggested 37 air changes per hour. Traditionally, all air used to
achieve the CDC’s required standard of dilution is conditioned air, introduced
to the isolation environment and then exhausted to the exterior of the
facility. By increasing the amount of
required air changes per hour in an isolation facility, you will also increase
the demand on the HVAC system used to condition this air. ACC’s concept allows
you to reuse most of the conditioned air and exceed the CDC’s standard for
dilution at the same time. By using
HEPA filtration to remove pathogens from the air stream, the previously
conditioned air can be used safely again and again which greatly reduces the
demand on a hospital’s HVAC system.
Your infection control people will love you for reducing
their patient’s and employee’s risk of exposure to all types of known and
unknown airborne pathogens.
There are many other obvious applications of this
single-directional airflow concept including but not limited to surgery
facilities, examination rooms, burn units, Haz/Mat command centers,
bio-terrorism command centers and any other facility where air quality is
absolutely critical. This is the Best
Available Technology (BAT) out there today.
Don’t let your healthcare providers and patients be exposed to any more
hazards than is technologically possible to eliminate. Mr. Kaiser is available to conference with
your organization with notice to address all questions relating to this
advanced concept. Your employees and
your insurance company will be glad you did.
ACC and Water Energy
Technologies, Inc. are working together to provide a wide range of air and
water quality solutions. For more
information about this technology, or help with any air or water quality issue,
please contact:
David
Kaiser Phone 805.525.6318
or email info@airbornecontaminationcontrol.com
Mr.
Kaiser has owned and operated ACC since 1978.
He has been actively involved in the contamination control business for
several decades, and holds several patents in the field. His clients have included hospitals and food
manufacturing facilities – places that habitually have air quality issues
ranging from viruses and bacteria to mold spore. The cornerstone of his business has been thinking out of the box
and providing solutions to existing problems in novel ways. Prior to ACC, Mr. Kaiser was deeply
involved in the energy and insurance industries, has been a prominent and active
member in the Rotary Club and in the Santa Paula community since attending the
University of New Mexico and spending time as a US Navy CB.
Bob
Beddingfield Phone 713.464.7117
or email info@waterenergy.com.
Mr.
Beddingfield is the founder of Water Energy Technologies, Inc. - a solution
provider to multiple industries including wastewater management, environmental
clean-up and protection, food safety, healthcare, cooling towers, laundry and
textile manufacturing. WET provides
efficient, practical and durable solutions to chronic problems plaguing these
industries. Mr. Beddingfield attended
Texas A&M and Sam Houston State Universities and has a Bachelor’s degree in
Finance.
Appendix: California OSHPD Letter to ACC.
