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New York State has also required subway riders to wear face masks and the state’s transit agency has begun offering free masks. This would prevent any viral particles a sick rider exhales from being recirculated through the ventilation system. To help address that, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the city’s subway, is testing out new ultraviolet technology that could be installed inside trains to kill viral matter in the air. Still the simulations underscore the importance of both good ventilation and passengers wearing masks: Without proper ventilation, those aerosols would stay aloft in the air and build with each sneeze or cough. And while it is still unclear how much virus is needed for someone to be infected, coming into contact with a few viral particles may not make you sick. Public health experts caution that not all the particles released from a sneeze - or those shown in these simulations - contain viral matter. “Even if you are not standing directly beside the person who coughed or sneezed, you are still in contact with that emission.”
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“You can see how well dispersed that plume is,” said Krystal Pollitt, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health. In the simulation without a mask, many more droplets coat the floor around the rider and aerosols disperse into the air, eventually moving through the ventilation system.īecause the ventilation system pushes air across the train, rather than down into vents on the floor, those aerosols could come in contact with someone standing between the person sneezing and the ceiling vent. The ventilation system then pulls those particles into a vent on the ceiling of the car and pushes them through the filters. In the mask simulation, some larger droplets escape from the sides of the mask and fall to the floor, while tiny aerosols hover in the air. Here are two air-flow scenarios in which a rider sneezes - one while wearing a mask, and the other without. For example, if someone in a car sneezes, riders could be exposed to viral particles in the air that don’t get filtered out more than once, underscoring the importance of wearing masks. The recycled air on subway cars is replaced on average at least 18 times an hour, far higher than the recommended exchange rate for offices, which is six to eight times an hour, or classrooms, which is three to four times an hour.Įven with a relatively high exchange rate, however, viral particles that slip past the subway system’s filters could - based on ventilation patterns - circulate at least three times in the car over the course of several minutes.
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Still, the subway’s so-called air exchange rate - or how often recirculated air is completely replaced with fresh air - helps minimize the risk of coronavirus transmission for riders. Subway cars use filters that are rated MERV-7 and are replaced every 36 days, though they may be replaced sooner if needed.
#NYC TRAIN SIMULATOR UPGRADE#
Experts recommend that indoor spaces upgrade their filters to a level 13 to help ward against the airborne transmission of the coronavirus. MERV filters are rated on a scale of one to 20. Filters like these are rated by their ability to block large particles, also known as their minimum efficiency reporting value, or MERV.