The district of Freising participates in the study "Safe classroom".
In the debate about air filters, it should provide answers about what best protects against corona.
Freising - The district school committee dealt three times with the acquisition of mobile air purification devices for the 13 district schools. Three times they followed the statements of the Federal Environment Agency and therefore did not get such air purifiers for all 675 classrooms, but “only” for 29 poorly ventilated rooms. But because, according to District Administrator Helmut Petz, “really want to do everything that makes sense” and “leave no stone unturned” in order to protect children in schools from corona infections, the university is now involved in the “Safe Classroom” research project Munich attached.
The aim of the research project, in which the Technical University of Munich, the LMU and the Max Planck Institute in Mainz are also involved, is to use measurements of the air quality in classrooms over an entire school year to find out how which ventilation variants and air purification devices affect the Air quality and thus on the aerosol pollution in classrooms.
A total of 59 sensors will be installed in district schools
Professor Christian Schwarzbauer from the Munich University of Applied Sciences came to the Camerloher Gymnasium on Thursday to present the study and the mini-boxes with their multiple sensors that record a large number of parameters.
An important starting point of the study is to carry out extensive investigations, to study different rooms and school types and to collect the results over a whole year.
Because in winter, for example, there would certainly be less ventilation than in summer.
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At the introduction: (from left) Florian Plajer (civil engineering, district office), headmistress Andrea Bliese, district administrator Helmut Petz and Prof. Christian Schwarzbauer.
© Lehmann
The data that the sensor box receives - between three and eight such boxes are installed in each district school, there are 59 in total - are sent every minute by radio to a so-called gateway.
This slightly larger box stores the data for later evaluation.
The boxes are set up in classrooms with a wide variety of ventilation scenarios.
The first results should be available at the end of the year
In this way, one hopes to finally find out which ventilation systems actually work, how and where, in classroom teaching. When is simple ventilation enough? Where and how much help which air purification devices really help? By what factor are decentralized exhaust air systems more effective? Both Petz and Schwarzbauer hope that the results will bring the sometimes emotional discussions about the procurement of air purification devices back to a fact-based level - even if that will probably no longer be relevant for this school year.
Although the first results are to be presented in November or December, according to Schwarzbauer, the first reliable information and the resulting findings can only be expected in February / March or after the end of the research project. The results of the study, in which the district participates and which costs the district 20,000 euros, are also important in the medium term, said Florian Plajer, head of the civil engineering department, at the appointment at the Camerloher grammar school. The findings are also relevant for the time after the pandemic, when schools are being converted, renovated or rebuilt.
