Some Teachers Receive Little Guidance On How To Use Air Purifiers
After months of remote learning, Mohammad Jehad Ahmad entered his classroom for the first time last March and stumbled upon a small white device in the center of the room.
Ahmad, a high-school math teacher in the Bronx, soon realized the device was an air purifier, but he didn’t know how to use it. “It was unplugged in the center of the room,” said Ahmad. “I imagined whoever put it there, put it there for a reason, but there was no extension cord or anything to plug into.”
He remembers other teachers saying that the purifiers should stay in the middle of the room for best efficiency, but no one was really sure, because they didn’t receive any instruction or guidance from their school or the city’s Department of Education (DOE).
It was around springtime, and the weather was getting warmer. For the rest of the school year, Ahmad didn’t use the purifier, relying instead on windows for classroom ventilation.
Over the summer, he came across news stories and social media posts criticizing the purifiers, but he didn’t pay much attention until the first day of the school year in September, when he encountered not one but two air purifiers in his classroom.
Ahmad says he still hadn’t received any instruction in how to use them, so he decided to conduct his own research. “I wanted to make sure it wasn’t just people complaining for the sake of complaining, so I started looking into the purifier myself. What I learned was that these purifiers were not as effective as they should be for the price.”
The DOE purchased two air purifiers for each city classroom, priced at $549 each, for a total of over $40 million. The model they chose is the Intellipure Compact, and the DOE’s purchase was the largest in the company’s history. Chicago Public Schools, City University of New York, and Cornell University are among other educational institutions that purchased the Compact.
In August, students from Townsend Harris High School in Queens broke the story that the air purifiers are not “HEPA purifiers,” as claimed by the DOE.
HEPA stands for High Efficiency Particulate Air. “It’s a standard for how many particles and what size particles the filter captures,” explains Dr. Faye McNeill, a chemical engineer and professor at Columbia University. The HEPA standard is set by the U.S. Department of Energy and has gone through peer-reviewed testing since the early 1940s.
“Nothing works as efficiently and as cheaply as a HEPA filter does,” said Dr. Alex Huffman, aerosol scientist at the University of Denver. “They’re rated to take up 99.97% of the particles that are hardest to filter.”
Intellipure states that “every unit is individually tested and certified to guarantee better than HEPA efficiency.”
“That’s a misnomer,” said Jake Jacobs, a middle-school art teacher in the Bronx entering his 14th year as a city teacher. “Anybody could walk down the street and say something is better than something else. It’s not accurate. Just describe your product.”
Jacobs has been frustrated by how loud the purifiers are. He sets the fan speed at medium, which he says is quiet enough. “The only question is, how much filtering is it doing? I have no idea,” said Jacobs.
The purifiers have four settings: low, medium, high and turbo. Intellipure says that the Compact is “ultra-quiet.” Some teachers disagree.
“Turbo sounds like an airplane. If I had them both on turbo, I wouldn’t be able to hear the kids at all,” said Sarah Allen, a first-grade teacher in Brooklyn. “The kids have gotten really good at speaking loudly. And we’re used to really projecting so they can hear us better.”
Dr. Kimberly Prather, an aerosol scientist at the University of California, San Diego, says that “the lower settings don’t filter the air as fast. But it’s better using the lower settings than not using them at all.”
For the purifiers to be effective, it’s vital to ensure proper placement, setting and frequency. For instance, placing them by open windows would filter mostly fresh air, rather than classroom air.
This was a lesson Ahmad had to learn the hard way. One of his classroom walls is full of windows. Initially, he placed one of the purifiers by that wall and the other one on the opposite side of the room. “None of this was based on fact, I just thought one would clean one side of the room and the other would clean the other side,” said Ahmad.
“The placement does matter. You don’t want it to be in a corner,” said Dr. McNeill. “You want it to be in an area where the airflow isn’t obstructed.”
Another important tip is to leave the purifiers on during recess. “Make sure they don’t turn it off when the people leave the room,” said Dr. Huffman. “It basically flushes the air out while they’re gone. People may have the idea of energy savings. But that’s just not what we should do.”
When asked whether the DOE provided instruction or guidance to city teachers, a spokesperson told Labor NY that “if educators have questions about how to use their air purifiers, they should connect with the custodial engineer for support,” adding they “are experts on their buildings and ventilation systems.”
Ahmad’s high school did not respond to a request for comment.
Allen says her school custodians have been very helpful. “I’m lucky that in my school, our custodians got some guidance from their supervisor,” she said. The custodians turn the purifiers on and off at the beginning and end of the school day, so teachers don’t need to.
Although teachers like Ahmad, Jacobs, and Allen have conducted their own research on how to use the purifiers, that’s not the case for all teachers.
Allen says that the lack of instruction has led some teachers to not use them at all. “Some turn it off all day because it’s loud. I heard one teacher saying it’s a doorstop, they use it to hold the door open. Some set their coffee on it, others are still in the closet and have never been opened.”
The novelty of the purifiers has also confused some students. “Some days the air purifiers get turned off because a kid thinks it’s an air conditioner,” said Ahmad. “I have to double check them after every period.”
At first, Jacobs’ students would trip or knock into the purifiers. “The whole front cover would fall off. It happened again and again.”
Students from Stuyvesant High School in lower Manhattan have had mixed experiences. “They’re loud. When I sit next to them I can’t hear the teacher,” said junior Roxie Gosfield. On the other hand, Hana Glanz, who is also a junior, said, “To be honest, I didn’t even notice them.”
Lea Esipov, a Stuyvesant junior, said, “I tripped over one of them today.” One of the purifiers is in the back of the classroom, where she usually walks to get to her desk. “They’re a little loud. Masks already make it hard to hear, but it’s no big deal if it keeps us safe.”
Experts encourage teachers to make the purifiers a teachable moment. “Explain what the filter does and try to remove the mystery of this virus,” Dr. Prather said. Dr. McNeill agrees. “Teach students and get them to have a sense of ownership of what’s going on by being your partners in keeping the classroom a safe place.”
And whatever the issues, Ahmad says, “I just do what I can because I’m not there to fight about air, I’m there to teach kids.”
