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Ventilation of Health Care Facilities
ANSI/ASHRAE/ASHE Addendum a to ANSI/ASHRAE/ASHE Standard 170-2017 Addendum a clarifies filtration requirements on a space-by-space basis. The filtration levels designated and their rational basis, are included in Informative Appendix C, Table C-1. In brief, this addendum.
National Guide for Safe Workplaces: COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic has had an unprecedented impact on the way people live and work. Australian workplaces of all sizes and across all industries have had to significantly modify their operations to protect their workers and the broader community. Until there is an effective vaccine or treatment, there can be no return to business as […]
Tale of Two Recoveries: Upbeat Economic Prospects Contrast With a Slow Emergence from the Health Crisis
The agricultural sector has remained resilient during the pandemic.
U.S. Jobs Recovery Lost Momentum in November; ECB Set to Extend QE Program at the December 10 Policy Decision
Job growth slowed in November, a sign that the worsening pandemic is weighing on the recovery. Nonfarm payroll job growth slowed to 245,000 in November from 610,000 in October (revised down from 638,000), 711,000 in September (revised up from 672,000), and 1.5 million in August. November’s job growth undershot the consensus forecast of 485,000. Government […]
Fed to Wind Down Some Emergency Lending Programs; EU Politics Delaying Ratification of Recovery Plan
The Treasury Department on November 19 ordered the Federal Reserve to stop making new loans through its liquidity facilities funded by the CARES Act by year-end; several lending facilities which do not depend on CARES Act funding can continue. The Fed established these lending facilities in the spring as the pandemic reached the United States […]
Chinese Growth Broadens Further as Consumers Open Wallets; Crosswinds for the U.S. Recovery in November
China’s recovery broadened further in October as stronger business activity and lifted restrictions on travel and congregate businesses spurred consumers to catch up on spending deferred earlier in the year. Retail sales of consumer goods grew 4.3 percent on the year in October, up from 3.3 percent in September and a third consecutive month of […]
China Slows Sharply on Real Estate on Electricity Supply Headwinds; U.S. Core CPI Slowed in the Third Quarter
China’s economy weakened sharply in the third quarter as the Delta wave, electrical power shortages, and the real estate slowdown weighed on growth. Real GDP growth slowed to a weak 0.2% quarterly rate (seasonally adjusted but not annualized) in the advance estimate for the third quarter of 2021, less than half the second quarter’s 1.3% […]
Fed Signals They Could Start Reducing Asset Purchases “Soon”; Bank of England Nearing a Rate Hike
As expected, the Federal Open Market Committee used their September 22 Monetary Policy Decision to tee up a reduction in monetary stimulus. The key phrase from their monetary policy statement reads, “A moderation in the pace of asset purchases may soon be warranted.” Barring big economic surprises, the Federal Reserve will likely announce a slower […]
Fed’s September Decision Likely to Tee Up a November Taper of QE Programs; Bank of England Is Nearing a First Rate Hike
The Federal Reserve’s September 21 and 22 Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting is expected to tee up a November announcement of a taper (slower purchases) of their quantitative easing programs. The FOMC will update their Summary of Economic Projections a.k.a. dot plot at the meeting, too. Financial markets will closely read the pace of […]
ECB Tapers On An “Increasingly Advanced” Economic Rebound, But Its QE Program Will Outlast the Fed’s
The Governing Council of the European Central Bank (ECB) announced a taper of its quantitative easing program at its September 9 decision. Net purchases under the Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme (PEPP) will slow in the fourth quarter of 2021 to a “moderately lower pace” than in the second and third quarters. Like previous PEPP announcements, […]
U.S. CPI Inflation Slows in July; Bank of Mexico Hikes Rates; More Data Confirm China’s Expansion is Slowing
The consumer price index for urban consumers (CPI-U or more commonly just CPI) rose 0.5% in July from June, matching consensus expectations, and slowing from June’s 0.9% increase. July’s increase was the lowest since February. Energy prices rose 1.6% in July on a 2.4% increase in gasoline prices. Food prices rose 0.7% on the month, […]
U.S. Saw Blockbuster Jobs Growth and Strong PMIs in July; Chinese Growth
The economy added a blockbuster 943,000 nonfarm payroll jobs in July, and employment in May and June was revised up by a net 119,000. The unemployment rate dropped 0.5 percentage point to 5.4%, the lowest since February 2020’s 3.5%. Employment in the household survey (different from the survey of payrolls) jumped 1.043 million on the […]
Fed Sets the Countdown to Taper Ticking as U.S. Real GDP Recovers Its Pre-Crisis Peak; Eurozone Is Back in Recovery
The Federal Open Market Committee kept monetary policy unchanged in its July 28 decision, but signaled that they have started the tapering clock. The committee said that the economy has made “progress” toward their goals of full employment and inflation averaging 2% over the longer run, but not the “substantial further progress” they set in […]
ECB Strengthens Rate Guidance; U.S. Real GDP to Recover Above Pre-Crisis Peak in Second Quarter’s Release
As expected, the European Central Bank strengthened its forward guidance regarding interest rates at its July 22 Governing Council Decision. The decision was the first after their announcement of a more dovish monetary policy strategy on July 8. The Governing Council now “expects” to keep interest rates at current or lower levels until two criteria […]
U.S. Consumer Spending Continues to Boom; Chinese Growth a Little Soft in the Second Quarter
Consumer spending continues to boom: June’s retail sales were up 19.8% from their level in February 2020, before the pandemic hit the U.S. Retail and food services sales rose 0.6% in June from May; this was partially offset by a 0.4% downward revision to May’s level of retail sales, which are now down 1.7% from […]
China Cuts Reserve Requirement Ratio; ECB Strategic Review Opens a Door for More Dovish Guidance at July 22 Decision
The People’s Bank of China (PBoC) reduced the reserve requirement ratio (“RRR”) for Chinese commercial banks by 0.5 percentage point on July 9; the RRR cut allows commercial banks to turn more of their customers’ deposits into loans rather than holding them at the central bank as reserves. The PBoC estimates that the RRR cut […]
Mexico Surprises With a June Rate Hike; U.S. Unemployment Rate Expected to Fall to 5.6% in the June Jobs Report
The Bank of Mexico (Banxico) surprised with a 0.25 percentage point hike in their policy interbank rate at the June 24 Monetary Policy Committee meeting, raising the rate to 4.25%; no economists surveyed by Bloomberg prior to the decision had expected a hike. Banxico’s announcement cited the jump in U.S. CPI inflation to the highest […]
Fed on Hold in June, but Likely to Edge Toward a Taper Discussion; ECB Likewise on Hold Despite Improving Data
The consumer price index for all urban consumers rose 0.6% in May vs 0.5% expected and 0.8% in April. In year-over-year terms, CPI inflation accelerated to 5.0% in May from 4.2% in April and was the highest since August 2008. But since consumer prices fell last April and May as the economy entered free-fall, the […]
April Jobs Reports Disappoints in U.S. and Canada; Bank of England Slows QE Program
The April jobs report was a huge disappointment. The economy added just 266,000 jobs, far short of expectations of around a million; the BLS also revised down job growth in February and March by a net 78,000. The unemployment rate ticked up to 6.1% from 6.0% as the labor force increased by 430,000, employment (measured […]
Glossary of Medical Terminology for Immunisation and Vaccine Development
This glossary was developed to help community organisations, translators and interpreters, bilingual workers, and community leaders to better understand and communicate about vaccine development and implementation.
Core Recommendations for Reducing Airborne Infectious Aerosol Exposure
The following recommendations are the basis for the detailed guidance issued by ASHRAE Epidemic Task Force. They are based on the concept that within limits ventilation, filtration, and air cleaners can be deployed flexibly to achieve exposure reduction goals subject to constraints that may include comfort, energy use, and costs. This is done by setting […]
Global Economic Highlights: U.S. Set for Another Robust Jobs Report for April; Central Banks Likely to Talk Tapering in UK, Hike in Brazil This Week
The PNC Financial Services Group’s May 2, 2021 Economic Report
Global Economic Highlights: Stimulus Bill and Vaccine Rollout Boost the US Growth Outlook; UK in Double-Dip Recession as EU Trade Plunges
The PNC Financial Services Group’s March 15, 2021 Economic Report
Global Economic Highlights: Better Than Expected U.S. Job Growth in February, But Still a Long Way from Recovered; ECB Set to Tamp Down Yields
The PNC Financial Services Group’s March 8, 2021 Economic Report
Global Economic Highlights: Stimulus Lifts U.S. Personal Income Sharply in January, and Expenditures Rise, Too; ECB Likely to Increase Pace of QE
The PNC Financial Services Group’s March 1, 2021 Economic Report
Global Economic Highlights: Fed on Hold in January as U.S. Muddles Through Early 2021’s Economic Soft Patch; ECB Is Trying to Talk Down the Euro
The PNC Financial Services Group’s February 1, 2021 Economic Report
Global Economic Highlights: ECB on Hold in January Amid Second Eurozone Downturn; a Global Double-Dip Recession Could Be Underway
The PNC Financial Services Group’s January 25, 2021 Economic Report
Global Economic Highlights: Brexit Uncertainty Resolves, but UK-EU Trade Tensions to Persist; US Jobless Claims Edged Lower in Late December
The PNC Financial Services Group’s January 4, 2021 Economic Report
Global Economic Highlights: Fed Chair Emphasizes Monetary Policy to Be Looser for Longer than in Prior Recovery; Mexico Cuts Policy Rate
The PNC Financial Services Group’s February 16, 2021 Economic Report
Export Growth to Slow as Developed-World Consumers Shift Spending Back to Services and Away from Made-In-China Goods
China’s economy faces new challenges as its developed-world export markets emerge from the pandemic. After controlling the pandemic’s spread in the spring of 2020, China reopened its economy earlier and with fewer restrictions than other large economies. Real GDP plunged 8.7% in quarterly seasonally-adjusted terms in the first quarter of 2020 (not annualized), bounced back […]
Ventilation for Acceptable Indoor Air Quality
The purpose of this standard is to specify minimum ventilation rates and other measures intended to provide indoor air quality that is acceptable to human occupants and that minimizes adverse health effects. This standard is intended for regulatory application to new buildings, additions to existing buildings, and those changes to existing buildings that are identified […]
RESIDENTIAL AIR CLEANERS: A Technical Summary
Common indoor air pollutants include a wide variety of particulate matter (PM) and gaseous contaminants. Airborne PM ranges in size from a few nanometers (nm) to tens of micrometers (μm) and is composed of both biological and non-biological matter. Indoor particles are commonly categorized into coarse particles (PM10) at 10 μm to 2.5 μm diameter, […]
Crisis in Infectious Diseases: Time for a New Paradigm?
Current practices in the treatment of infectious diseases are the result of two fundamental changes in antimicrobial therapy that occurred in the mid-20th century: the transition from pathogen-specific therapy to non-pathogen-specific therapy and the shift toward emphasis on antiinfective strategies that target microbial pathogens over those that enhance host immunity. The alarming rise in antimicrobial-resistant strains, […]
Biodefense in the Pandemic Era
The current scope and role of the Research and Development Chemical and Biological Defense Department (RD-CB) within the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) is to develop materiel, medical products and capabilities that enable the Warfighter to remain lethal in areas contested with chemical and biological (CB) weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The focus of the RD-CB […]
Ventilation and laboratory confirmed acute respiratory infection (ARI) rates in college residence halls in College Park, Maryland
Strategies to protect building occupants from the risk of acute respiratory infection (ARI) need to consider ventilation for its ability to dilute and remove indoor bioaerosols. Prior studies have described an association of increased self-reported colds and influenza-like symptoms with low ventilation but have not combined rigorous characterization of ventilation with assessment of laboratory-confirmed infections. […]
Characterization of infectious aerosols in health care facilities: An aid to effective engineering controls and preventive strategies
Assessment of strategies for engineering controls for the prevention of airborne infectious disease transmission to patients and to health care and related workers requires consideration of the factors relevant to aerosol characterization. These factors include aerosol generation, particle sizes and concentrations, organism viability, infectivity and virulence, airflow and climate, and environmental sampling and analysis. The […]
New law preventing COVID-19: the first effort to prevent occupational transmission of disease of the 21st century in the USA
Using legislative policy analysis methods, this article describes the traditional principles of state labor relations that were rewritten using the legislative pen, now instead requiring risk assessment for all employees and employers to thereby prevent occupational transmission of disease. As discussed here, Virginia, the USA state, responded with a COVID-19 prevention law deploying modern industrial […]
Low-cost measurement of face mask efficacy for filtering expelled droplets during speech
The global spread of COVID-19 in early 2020 has significantly increased the demand for face masks around the world while stimulating research about their efficacy. Here we adapt a re- recently demonstrated optical imaging approach and highlight stark differences in the effectiveness of different masks and mask alternatives to suppress the spread of respiratory droplets […]
Health Hazard Evaluation Report 99-0348-2786 Fremont Beef Company
On September 23, 1999, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) received a request for a Health Hazard Evaluation (HHE) at the Fremont Beef Company in Fremont, Nebraska. The request, from management officials at the plant, concerned worker exposures to ozone during research and development (R&D) procedures for a new sanitation treatment process […]
GUIDANCE FOR THE RE-OPENING OF SCHOOLS
Protecting the health, safety and welfare of the world’s students, faculty, and administrators from the spread of SARS-Cov-2 (the virus that causes the COVID-19 disease) is essential to protecting the entire population. ASHRAE’s guidance for schools provides practical information and checklists to help minimize the chance of spreading SARS-CoV-2. A summary of key general recommendations […]
Symptoms and Functional Impairment Assessed 8 Months After Mild COVID-19 Among Health Care Workers
Approximately 80% of hospitalized patients with COVID-19 report persistent symptoms several months after infection onset. However, knowledge of long-term outcomes among individuals with mild COVID-19 is scarce, and prevalence data are hampered by selection bias and suboptimal control groups. This cohort study investigated COVID-19–related long-term symptoms in health care professionals.
Data and Policy to Guide Opening Schools Safely to Limit the Spread of SARS-CoV-2 Infection
On March 11, 2020, less than 2 weeks after community transmission of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS CoV-2) was identified in the US, the World Health Organization declared that the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak was a global pandemic. By March 25, 2020, all kindergarten to grade 12 (K-12) public schools in the […]
Position Paper: Bioterrorism Preparedness & Response A Proposed Model for Bioterrorism Response: Initial Operations and Characterization
This paper presents the position of the InterAgency Board (IAB) on an approach to developing a national bioterrorism response capability to address long-standing gaps in domestic bioterrorism preparedness and response. The IAB proposes a model that brings together public safety jurisdictions, federal resources, processes, standards, and doctrine to support the creation of a network of locally owned and operated […]
SARS-CoV-2 Transmission From People Without COVID-19 Symptoms
As severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the novel coronavirus that causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), began to spread globally, it became apparent that the virus, unlike the closely related SARS-CoV in the 2003 outbreak, could not be contained by symptom-based screening alone. Asymptomatic and clinically mild infections were uncommon during the 2003 SARS-CoV […]
Leveraging Open Science to Accelerate Research
The United States has mobilized the full force of its clinical research enterprise to address the Covid-19 pandemic, allocating billions of dollars to support timely research. As of January 2021, for example, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) had issued nearly a thousand awards cumulatively worth roughly $2 billion to support Covid-19 projects ranging from […]
News From the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Unsafe Use of Disinfectants
More Than 1 in 3 US Adults Use Disinfectants Unsafely; In a recent online survey, 39% of US adults reported using disinfectants and other cleaning products in potentially harmful ways as they tried to prevent severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection.
News From the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Precautions Limited Cases at Milwaukee Primary
High rates of voting by mail and other pre- prevention strategies during Milwaukee’s April primary limited the election-related spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), according to a report by CDC and City of Milwaukee Health Department researchers.
News From the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Health Workers Waning Antibody Levels.
Nearly 1 in 5 hospitals reduced in-person lactation support and nearly three-quarters discharged new mothers in less than 48 hours to lessen the risk of contracting severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, according to a CDC report.
Current Intelligence Bulletin 69: NIOSH Practices in Occupational Risk Assessment
Exposure to on-the-job health hazards is a problem faced by workers worldwide. Unlike safety hazards that may lead to injury, health hazards can lead to various types of illness. For example, exposures to some chemicals used in work processes may cause immediate sensory irritation (e.g., stinging or burning eyes, dry throat, cough); in other cases, […]
Disinfection and Reuse of Personal Protective Equipment
A global shortage of respirators (e.g., N95 and N100) and surgical masks has led the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to recommend conservation and, when necessary, the reuse of respiratory personal protective equipment (PPE in response to the COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) surge. As a last resort, homemade masks […]
Decontamination Best Practices: Taking Care of You
Protect Yourself • The SARS-CoV2 virus is much more likely to be spread as respiratory droplets than through contaminated objects and surfaces • Practice good hand hygiene • Wash hands preferably with soap and water for at least 20 seconds before touching your face, eyes, or respirator; use a hand sanitizer with at least 60% ethanol or 70% isopropanol when unable […]
Decontamination Best Practices: Taking Care of Your Workplace
Equipment • Check instructions for proper cleaning procedures • Wear disposable clean gloves • If soiled, first clean surfaces with approved cleaner (soap and water, for example) • Diluted bleach or at least 70% isopropyl alcohol is appropriate for many non-porous surfaces – Dilute household bleach to about 2% (4 teaspoons per quart (4 cups) of tap water) – Ensure […]
Decontamination Best Practices: Taking Care of Your Transportation
Cleaning procedures: • Check labeled instructions for proper cleaning procedures • Wear disposable clean gloves • If soiled, first clean surfaces with approved cleaner (soap and water, for example) • Apply a disinfectant to kill the virus, the surface must stay wet for the entire time on the label, this may require up to 10 minutes for some products • […]
Evaluating a commercially available in-duct bipolar ionization device for pollutant removal and potential byproduct formation.
We conducted a series of experiments to evaluate the gas and particle removal effectiveness and potential for byproduct formation resulting from the operation of a commercially available in-duct bipolar ionization device. Laboratory tests were conducted with the ionizer installed in a small air handler serving a large semi-furnished chamber. Chamber experiments were conducted under normal […]
Images In Clinical Medicine: A Sneeze
A human sneeze can eject droplets of fluid and potentially infectious organisms. The image sequence captures, in increments of 20 msec, the emission of a sneeze cloud produced by a healthy person.
Global Economic Highlights
Real GDP plummeted 32.9 percent at an annualized seasonally-adjusted rate in the advance, or first estimate, for the second quarter of 2020. This was by far the biggest drop in the history of the series, going back to 1947. The release was in line with most economists’ forecasts of a 30 to 35 percent drop. […]
A Report for Professional Cleaning and Restoration Contractors
This publication may be distributed or transmitted in electronic or printed methods without permission from the publishers, the Restoration Industry Association (RIA), the Institute of Inspection, Cleaning and Restoration Certification (IICRC) and the American Industrial Hygiene Association (AIHA), provided such transmission or distribution of the document is in whole, without modification, and does not contain […]