E.

It's mind-numbing. Most of us would be utterly amazed to learn that the standard protocol for indoor air safety in a hospital operating environment only calls for turning the air over four times in an hour!  There is no standard for purity. There appears to be neither mention nor concern for what is inevitably going to be found proliferating in the air -- only that the jumbled amalgamation of toxic nasties get to take a tumble every fifteen minutes.  If one were a germ, where better to hang out than in a hospital sickroom or an operating room?

How many places can you identify that microbes and viruses can be lurking, waiting for their next victims?  Now think about the fact that there is no mandate to do anything more than just recirculate the air.  Not exchange.  Not purify.  Just recirculate.  So that what goes on in the operating rooms can be what those in the halls, waiting rooms, and patient rooms get to breathe.

F.

It's predictable.  Back in 1860, almost one and a half centuries ago, Florence Nightingale wrote a book called Notes on Nursing, what it is and what it is not.  Despite her lack of the micro-diagnostic equipment we have today, her powerful observations regarding the causes and cures for disease were absolutely dead on.  She contended way back then that the air in the sickroom needed to be at least as clean as the air out doors. She militated for proper food, decent hygiene and sanitization, and uncontaminated drinking water.  And she would be apoplectic at the attitude of modern medicine which treats virtually all maladies and ailments with some form of a synthetic poison dubbed a prescription pharmaceutical.  While certain legitimate drugs have been a boon, many, if not most, would likely be unnecessary if we followed her wise counsel on the prevention and treatment of what ails us.

Highlights from Notes on Nursing, what it is and what it is not by Florence Nightingale
Chapter 1:  Ventilation and Warming "First rule of nursing, to keep the air within as pure as the air without." By reading between the lines the reader is asked by Nightingale to compare the difference between a murderer trying to justify his crime by saying that it is alright, to the victim of nursing neglect who often likewise says that everything is alright. And asks are we not all mad for allowing murderers in the form of "musty unaired unsunned room, the scarlet fever which is behind the door, or the fever and hospital gangrene which are stalking among the crowded beds of a hospital" to kill those who are under our care?
"What will they say if it is proved to be true that fully one-half of all the disease we suffer from is occasioned by people sleeping with their windows shut?" "Even in health people cannot repeatedly breathe air in which they live with impunity, on account of its becoming charged with unwholesome matter from the lungs and skin."

	Chapter 2: Health of Houses "There are five essential points in securing the health of houses: Pure air; Pure water; Efficient drainage; Cleanliness; Light" "Badly constructed houses do for the healthy what badly constructed hospitals do for the sick." "You cannot have the air of the house pure with dung-heaps under the windows."
"There are other ways of having filth inside a house besides having dirt in heaps. Old papered walls of years' standing, dirty carpets, uncleansed furniture, are just as ready sources of impurity to the air as if there were a dung-heap in the basement." "True nursing ignores infection, except to prevent it. Cleanliness and fresh air from open windows, with unremitting attention to the patient, are the only defense a true nurse either asks or needs."
Excerpts from book taken from here.   Full text of book here or here.    Purchase book as paperback from Amazon.com

Make a charm to cause powerful trouble, and boil and bubble like a broth of hell. Double, double toil and trouble,      Fire burn and cauldron bubble. --from Shakespeare's Macbeth

With the building we have done in the United States since the early 1970's and all the attention to supposedly making our accommodations "energy efficient", we have ignored every principle for decent air and natural recovery Miss Nightingale, among countless others, so well recognized. Instead, we have constructed massive cauldrons of roiling infections “where the sun doesn’t shine” and “the wind doesn’t blow”. And we have done it, according to a writer in the Wall Street Journal "with deadly precision". Opening a window is not only unheard of, but it is also, in many instances, impossible. Contaminated air does not get out.  Good air does not get in.  Yet new pathogens are constantly being introduced, and they all get to interact with one another and infect the unsuspecting and susceptible.

It is not just a question of, "Who has previously touched  what each successive child is touching?", as important as that is.   It is a more serious question of, "What is swirling in the air from every source within the facility to which this precious life is being exposed?"   And the most important question of all is, "What is being done about it?"   Unfortunately, in most situations, the answer to that question ranges from "not much" to "nothing at all." Buzz.  Wrong answer.

G.

It is preventable. There is a world of difference, a wellness and sickness, life or death difference, between EXCHANGING the air and RECIRCULATING the air.   With the exchange of air, at the very minimum there is a dilution of the pathogens and contaminates which make us ill.  This limits the number and concentrations of items with which our immune systems must contend and gives us a fighting chance for survival. With the recirculation of air, there is merely the concentration of those unwanted elements.  If air exchange is impossible and air recirculation is inevitable, then something else needs to be done.  Today. Fortunately, to help us in that endeavor, there is not only AN answer, there is THE answer which makes good use of the Best Available Today’s Technology (“BATT”) for any environmental concerns needing attention. Pro-active Environmental Technologies is a vital part of the team which designs workable solutions which take into account, among other things, the added indoor air quality and hygienic issues which invariably arise in an ecosystem as delicate and potentially dangerous as a medical facility.