K-12 air quality research spotlighted by industry group
Mark Hernandez's air quality research is being highlight by Chemical and Engineering News.
Hernandez is a professor in the Environmental Engineering Program and air quality expert.
The work being spotlighted by C&EN, which is a publication of the American Chemical Society, initially focused on reducing the spread of COVID-19 in Denver Schools during the pandemic. It later expanded beyond concerns of infectious diseases to helping to improve air quality in schools across the board.
Launched in 2022 with funding from the CDC, the project seeks to correlate air quality in classrooms with the number of student absences due to respiratory illness.
The study’s provided portable HEPA air purifiers to classrooms across Colorado. Hernandez and his team installed air quality monitors to measure how well the filters were performing. By the end of 2023, 369 schools were enrolled in the project and agreed to send the researchers anonymous data on student absences.