Effectiveness of a local ventilation/filtration intervention for health-care worker exposure reduction to airborne infection in a hospital room

Details

• Personal Author:
  Dungi SR ; Ghia U ; Gressel M ; Mead, Kenneth R.
• Description:
  This study numerically examines the effectiveness of an expedient intervention to provide surge airborne-isolation capacity and health-care worker (HCW) protection during epidemics such as pandemic flu. The intervention pairs a portable ventilated headboard with a High Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) filter/fan system. Airborne droplet nuclei were theoretically generated via a patient cough in a traditional hospital patient room. Room airflow patterns were modeled by solving the Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes equations along with the continuity and energy equations. The Lagrangian discrete-phase model in the finite-volume solver ANSYS Fluent 14 was used to track the dispersal of an "infectious aerosol" originating from the patient cough. The study examined five different test configurations, and tracked the aerosol for 35 seconds following the cough. Without the intervention in the room, the HCW was exposed to the cough aerosol which also approached the HVAC exhaust and room door within 35 seconds. The ventilated headboard, in the operating position with its canopy extended and the HEPA system activated, was very effective, eliminating 99% of the patient-source aerosol within 20 seconds, and not allowing aerosol to escape the canopy or expose the HCW, thereby providing excellent HCW and patient-room protection. With the canopy retracted, the ventilated headboard lost its local control of the aerosol as the retracted canopy obstructed half of the headboard's inlet area, and failed to prevent exposures to the HCW or to the vicinity of the room-entry door; however, the overall patient room would continue to benefit from the dilution filtration air cleaning provided by the HEPA system. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Aerosols Air Pollutants, Occupational Communicable Diseases Engineering Health Personnel Occupational Health Particulate Matter Safety Ventilation
• Keywords:
  Aerosol-particles Airborne-particles Control-technology Engineering-controls Filters Health-care-personnel Infection-control Infectious-diseases Ventilation-systems
• Publisher:
  American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air-Conditioning Engineers
• Document Type:
  Text
• Genre:
  Proceedings
• Place as Subject:
  Illinois ; Ohio ; OSHA Region 5
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Division:
  DART - Division of Applied Research and Technology
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20046154
• Citation:
  Proceedings of the 2015 ASHRAE Winter Conference, January 24-28, 2015, Chicago, Illinois. Atlanta, GA: American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air-Conditioning Engineers, 2015 Jan; :CH-15-C017
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2015
• NORA Priority Area:
  Healthcare and Social Assistance ; Transportation, Warehousing and Utilities
• Peer Reviewed:
  False
• Source Full Name:
  Proceedings of the 2015 ASHRAE Winter Conference, January 24-28, 2015, Chicago, Illinois
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:1453889a0618cb5bc13b2ba0f1f6e8741f3305d26248eccf4f4b3d1e47c1c94feef1e35db958c4b855e708a0fb17e4bd264cd763f2b0e3b5c5065a2d6e0296f9
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/201287/cdc_201287_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 2.61 MB ]