An air curtain shooting down from the brim of a hard hat can prevent 99.8% of aerosols from reaching a worker's face. The technology, created by University of Michigan startup Taza Aya, potentially offers a new protection option for workers in industries where respiratory disease transmission is a concern.
Independent, third-party testing of Taza Aya's device showed the effectiveness of the air curtain, curved to encircle the face, coming from nozzles at the hat's brim. But for the air curtain to effectively protect against pathogens in the room, it must first be cleansed of pathogens itself. Previous research by the group of Taza Aya co-founder Herek Clack, U-M associate professor of civil and environmental engineering , showed that their method can remove and kill 99% of airborne viruses in farm and laboratory settings.
"Our air curtain technology is precisely designed to protect wearers from airborne infectious pathogens, using treated air as a barrier in which any pathogens present have been inactivated so that they are no longer able to infect you if you breathe them in," Clack said. "It's virtually unheard of—our level of protection against airborne germs, especially when combined with the improved ergonomics it also provides." Fire has been used throughout history for sterilization, and while we might not usually think of it this way, it's what's known as a thermal plasma.
Nonthermal, or cold, plasmas are made of highly energetic, electrically charged molecules and m.
