Clearing the Air

By Jonathan Tedjakusnadi

The air quality team hit the ground running this week. We’ve had multiple meetings with our stakeholder Katie and laid down the framework of our air quality investigation. This year we are observing the weight room and abnormal concentrations of particulate matter. We’ve scheduled a meeting with the building engineer to give us a tour of the building’s mechanisms and answer our questions regarding possible solutions to the situation.  

However, with so much work ahead of us on indoor air quality, we were bound to hit our first hiccup eventually (pun intended). Professor Zhu Yifang, an air quality specialist, was scheduled to meet with us this week but had an emergency to attend to. We’re trying to get into contact with her to begin our data collection as she manages the air quality equipment we need. This minor setback delayed our main operations until next week but it may have been a blessing in disguise. We’ve begun to brainstorm side project ideas and have come up with a few interesting areas of exploration. One avenue in particular was the sustainable viability of JWC’s cleaning products. Katie informed us that the primary cleaning product used was mixed from a very potent concentrate. Our team decided it might be interesting to investigate the active ingredients in the product and decide whether it may or may not be an occupational hazard. In order to expand our data measurements and provide a more concrete effect, we are also looking into exploring the BruinFit gym’s weight room and see if there are any observable effects. While most of this week has been spent planning, we look forward to executing our goals next week.