Summary The Ontario Workers Health & Safety Training Centre provides training on Indoor Air Quality. It’s valuable training for Joint Health and Safety Committee members to provide them on background to better understand how to go about gathering and analyzing information on indoor air in the workplace. The training covers common issues, limitations, and responsibilities. (preview here) Given the importance of […]
TL;DR: There is little to no evidence to show that coughing into your elbow prevents the spread of disease. Elbow-coughing has long struck me as a cop-out, but some posts on Twitter piqued my interest into digging around in the scientific literature. Thanks to Dr. Christine Peters and Dr. Lee Altenberg for the pointers to […]
I’ve been teaching large lectures for many years. After the initial remote teaching phase of the pandemic management required most faculty to go back to in-person teaching. While most of my colleagues decided to do so maskless, I made the unpopular decision to wear N95+ respirators while teaching in class. Despite pushback on N95s from […]
On March 28 I read of an agenda item, entitled “Repealing the ‘Entering PEO Office Protocols’, in the upcoming 556th Meeting of the Council of Professional Engineers Ontario, Friday March 31, 2023. Prepared by Mr. Gregory Wowchuk and seconded by Mr. Royden Fraser, two highly placed PEO Council members, it appeared to be an attempt […]
It’s March, 2023. Most of the world has “moved on from COVID” and stopped wearing masks. Here at York University, the YUScreen system was dropped last month and many of the door signs about COVID have been removed. But the fact remains that there are still plenty of reasons to wear a mask* in public. […]
It’s Fall 2022 and the masks are off. Well, officially, masking is a “personal choice”. Leadership has dropped the COVID ball and is hoping that nobody is going to pick it up again. So what’s left to do? Continue to mask, provide alternatives for everyone that don’t require in-person gathering (classes, labs, meetings), get vaccinated […]
The following are a set of preliminary tests I did to determine relative speech sound performance while wearing a mask. I’m particularly interested in the context of mask-wearing in a classroom, but this could be helpful in many other workplaces. I tested a number of masks in my dining room. Audio levels were measured using […]
York University’s EECS department has an Aranet4 CO2 sensor available for borrowing. Go to the ground floor of the Lassonde Engineering Building, and go to the sign-out desk in the PRISM computer lab at the south-west corner of the building (near the hallway that leads to the Steacie Library). The location is highlighted in light […]
September is coming. And with it, more COVID. That’s the truth of it. Universities, colleges, public schools and daycares will feel the impact of the next crop of COVID variants one student and one employee at a time. The “back to normal” story we were fed was a lie. It was convenient. It was popular. It felt good. But it was […]
In response to a thread on May 24, 2022, between Mr. Tom Jackman and Dr. Michael Schwandt, I decided to delve into the literature to point out the problematic messaging that has been coming from many governmental / public health bodies, including that in British Columbia. The two-sentence summary: public health officials in much of […]