Quantifying Proximity, Confinement, and Interventions in Disease Outbreaks: A Decision Support Framework for Air-Transported Pathogens.

The inability to communicate how infectious diseases are transmitted in human environments has triggered avoidance of interactions during the COVID-19 pandemic. We define a metric, Effective ReBreathed Volume (ERBV), that encapsulates how infectious pathogens, including SARS-CoV-2, transport in air. ERBV separates environmental transport from other factors in the chain of infection, allowing quantitative comparisons among situations.

Radon and moisture impacts from interventions integrated with housing energy retrofits.

Energy retrofits can reduce air exchange, raising the concern of whether indoor radon and moisture levels could increase. This pre/post-intervention study explored whether simple radon interventions implemented in conjunction with energy retrofits can prevent increases in radon and moisture levels. Treatment homes (n = 98) were matched with control (no energy retrofits or radon intervention) homes (n = 12).

Unburned Methane Emissions from Residential Natural Gas Appliances.

Methane, the primary component of natural gas (NG), is a potent greenhouse gas. NG is a common fuel for residential appliances because of low cost, high energy density, and relatively clean combustion. NG exhaust contains some unburned methane due to inevitable incomplete combustion.