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Taza Aya Air-Curtain Tech Protects Turkey Workers
Air curtain technology built into a helmet is being tested at the University of Michigan as a way to prevent respiratory illnesses in an especially vulnerable population - workers in a turkey processing plant.
But for the air curtain to effectively protect against pathogens in the room, it must first be cleansed of pathogens itself. Previous research by the group of Taza Aya co-founder Herek Clack, U-M associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, showed that their method can remove and kill 99% of airborne viruses in farm and laboratory settings.“Our air curtain technology is precisely designed to protect wearers from airborne infectious pathogens, using treated air as a barrier in which any pathogens present have been inactivated so that they are no longer able to infect you if you breathe them in,” Clack said. “It’s virtually unheard of—our level of protection against airborne germs, especially when combined with the improved ergonomics it also provides.”
In recent months, Taza Aya has conducted user experience testing with workers at Michigan Turkey Producers in Wyoming, Michigan, a processing plant that practices the humane handling of birds.
(Via Michigan Engineering.)
(Air curtain helmet by Taza Aya)
What if we are faced with another pandemic situation in which masks are required? Fans of John Brunner's dystopian 1972 novel The Sheep Look Up recall the filter-masks that were ubiquitous in the future:
(The Sheep Look Up)He got that much said before he doubled over in another fit of coughing. The acrid air ate at the back of his throat; he could imagine the tissues becoming horny, dense, impermeable. If this job's likely to involve me in frequent trips to LA I'm going to have to buy a filter-mask. And the hell with looking sissy. Saw on the way here it isn't only girls who wear them any more.
Update 25-Aug-2025: Consider the microscreen from Bolden's Pets (1955) by F.L. Wallace:
DOCTOR Kessler peered at him through the microscreen. It gave his face a narrow insubstantial appearance. The microscreen was a hemispherical force field enclosing his head. It originated in a tubular circlet that snapped around his throat at the top of the decontagion suit. The field killed all microlife that passed through it or came in contact with it.
End update.
Consider another science-fictional idea that contributes to the air curtain helmet idea, the force curtain from Venus Mines, Incorporated, by Nat Schachner (w. AL Zagat), published by Wonder Stories in 1931.
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