Blog & News

The February 13th edition of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report from the CDC highlights the potential risks posed to veterinarians of the ongoing H5N1 avian influenza outbreak.  Although the positivity rate was low (2%), those who tested positive for H5N1 antibodies did not report having treated animals with known or suspected H5N1 infections.

Work to transition Taza Aya’s current beta prototype, through the gamma prototype phase and into an MVP of the Worker Wearable Protection (WWP) product is progressing well and is on schedule for a Summer 2025 completion.   This marks yet another significant step toward redefining workplace safety, leveraging innovation as well as the know-how of an experienced product development team.  Hatch PD of Waukegan, IL is leading the product development activities.. 

“Our vision at Taza Aya is to revolutionize how industries approach worker safety and productivity,” said Herek Clack, Co-Founder at Taza Aya. “Partnering with Hatch Product Development aligns perfectly with our mission to deliver innovative, high-quality solutions that create tangible value. Their product design

Ann Arbor, MI—12/17/24—Taza Aya, Inc., is excited to announce that its innovative Worker Wearable Product (WWP) has officially moved from the alpha phase to beta. This marks a major milestone on the path to a highly anticipated 2025 launch.

The transition to the beta phase follows twenty-two months of rigorous development and testing during the alpha phase, during which core functionality was established, and early feedback was gathered from select users. The beta phase will focus on expanding testing to a broader audience, incorporating user insights, and refining performance to deliver a product that meets the highest standards of quality and usability.

“This milestone represents a pivotal step forward for our team and our vision,” said Herek Clack, Co-Founder an

The realization is growing that the cause of low compliance among dairy workers with PPE recommendations to reduce transmission of H5N1 influenza is that traditional face masks present too many drawbacks in the work environment.  The recent commentary by Bagdasarian et al. in J. Infectious Diseases argues the case convincingly:   https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/230/3/543/7758743

At Taza Aya’s first attendance at the ISRP conference (Oxford, UK), conference goers voted our poster second-best!  We are grateful for the recognition, as well as for the many supportive comments towards our hard work and vision.

As of Aug 1st, CDC reports that four humans have become infected with the H5N1 strain of influenza that has spread among dairy cows in 14 states and led to preemptive depopulation of millions of head of poultry, which are more susceptible to the virus and are more likely to die once infected.

CDC has issued recommendations that dairy workers wear PPE, including traditional face masks.  However, in the same document it concedes the following limitations of the recommendations for dairy workers:

• Wearing an unfitted N95 respirator p

Ann Arbor, MI

June 25, 2024

Taza Aya, a device company advancing the next generation of personal respiratory protection solutions, today announced the results of the first phase of third-party testing designed to independently evaluate its wearable air curtain feature. The curved curtain of air flows downward a few inches in front of the face, issuing from specially designed nozzles mounted along the edge of the brim of a hardhat or visor.

Taza Aya contracted ARE Labs (Overland Park, KS) to conduct performance testing, which involved paired instrumented and ventilated mannequins facing each other, one of the mannequins wearing the air curtain device.   Two measures of performance were assessed: (1) the difference in aerosol concentrations on eith

Ann Arbor, MI

June 13, 2024 

Taza Aya, a device company pioneering the future of air curtain breathing solutions for workers and consumers, today announced the completion of a human-centered usability study for its groundbreaking Worker Wearable device. Conducted in partnership with Michigan Turkey Producers, a leading North American processor of farm-raised
turkeys, the study assessed the device’s usability, ergonomics, and overall effectiveness. The study was conducted with oversight from Castle IRB.

The Worker Wearable device features a non-thermal plasma reactor and an air curtain, creating a barrier of air encircling the wearer’s face. This innovative solution aims to
enhance the safety and efficiency of poultry processing workers by offering respi

A May 23, 2024 article in The Atlantic magazine goes deeper into the H5N1 outbreak among dairy cattle and associated infections among, at the moment, a handful of dairy workers.  Aside from the epidemiology and public health best practices when a new cluster of infectious disease cases is identified, the article points out the barriers that are stopping or slowing a more vigorous response.  From worries about the stigma of testing positive for H5N1 infection - both for livestock and for humans - there is relectance to make vaccines widely available.  Protective gear that is available such as goggles have their own disincentives for their use.  Worst of all, these barriers a

In Grand Rapids for the day to witness a production capacity improvement project at Michigan Turkey Producers, Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Xochitl Torres Small and several state and regional agriculture agency leads held a listening session to hear what issues are of greatest concern to local agriculture and related industries.  During the session, Taza Aya took the opportunity to introduce and explain its wearable air curtain technology for protecting workers at processing facilities from communicable diseases, supported in part by a grant from the Meat and Poultry Processing Research Initiative (MPPRI). 

The General Accountability Office (GAO) recently released a report that urges the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to directly address risks faced by meat and poultry processing workers, that were amplified by the COVID pandemic.  

Strikingly, the GAO report cites two studies conducted by OSHA’s Office of Occupational Medicine and Nursing that concluded the risk of COVID infection among meat packing plant workers to be 56X to more than 70X greater than the average risk in their respective states.  The key characteristics contributing to the higher risk delineated in the report are:

• Prolonged proximity.  Workers often

The CDC has acknowledged that it is investigating its recent Epidemiology Intelligence Service conference as a potential COVID super-spreader event.  Nearly 200 in-person attendees at the conference reported testing positive for COVID in a post-conference survey, after several attendees informed conference organizers of positive COVID test results on the last day of the conference.  Fortunately, there were no hospitalizations or deaths reported.  

Notable among the post-conference survey results:

• > 99% of respondents reported having received at least one vaccine dose
• 70% of respondents reported not wearing a mask during the conference

This outcome unders

Climate change, increased international travel, and other factors are what underlie the model projection by Airfinity Ltd. of a 28% chance of another pandemic as deadly as COVID-19 within the next 10 years.  The risk drops to single-digit percentages if effective vaccines can be developed and distributed within 100 days - a far shorter period of time than was seen in the COVID-19 pandemic.

ASHRAE (American Society for Heating, Refrigeration, and Air-Conditioning Engineers) has more than 50,000 members representing more than 130 countries.  The Society and its members “focus on building systems, energy efficiency, indoor air quality, refrigeration and sustainability within the industry.”   Therefore it was notable that in October, 2022 in response to both the COVID pandemic and rising cases of RSV, the society issued a position document on infectious aerosols that recommended a multi-layered protective approach.    

Specifically, while the ASHRAE position document reiterated support for proven building and infrastructure techn

The National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) recently released report entitled Transforming EPA Science to Meet Today’s and Tomorrow’s Challenges.  The report reflects the findings of a committee, convened by NASEM and of which I was honored to be a member, tasked with providing EPA with recommendations on how to best orient their scientific enterprise to meet their current mission while also anticipating future environmental challenges.

The report recommends, among many recommendations, that EPA leverage its air quality and air pollutant measurement expertise to advance the science of aerobiology and improving our un

The USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture has awarded Taza Aya $1M to adapt the company’s air curtain visor product for use by workers in the meat and poultry processing industry.  Awarded through the Meat and Poultry Processing Research and Innovation (MPPRI) program, USDA is seeking to increase the resilience of the domestic food production industry, particularly for small and medium sized processors.

Of the three topic areas of interest sought by USDA, the Taza Aya technology addresses Topic Area #2:  Worker Safety.  Specifically, the need to protect workers from communicable diseases during stages of meat and poultry proces

In a bell-ringing ceremony reminiscent of the end of trading day at the DJIA, Innovation Partnerships, a unit of the UM Office of the Vice-President for Research, officially recognized Taza Aya as a UM spinout and licensee.  

Co-founders Mike Drake and Herek Clack, along with newly appointed CEO Alberto Elli, each briefly spoke to the assembled audience, reflecting on the early days of the company, the challenges that arose, and the many ways in which Innovation Partnerships helped the company overcome them.  Associate Director of Licensing, Physical Sciences & Engineering Keith Hughes related the company’s record of innovation as measured by invention disclosures and patent filings, and Associate VP for Research and Innovation Partnerships Kelly Sexton present

Taza Aya has named Alberto Elli as the company’s CEO.  Alberto has executive leadership experience in public companies, private equity owned, and startups as well as serving as a career coach at Ann Arbor based Synko Associates, LLC.  He has previously held CEO, COO, and CFO roles at Fortune 500 companies (SGP-Merck and Sherwin-Williams) and at mid-sized companies (Geneva Watch and D+M Sound).  Beginning in 2013, Alberto served as CEO of Aquaro, Inc., an Ann Arbor based medical device startup that raised $10 million of funding under his leadership.   He also served as COO and President of QAMF a worldwide leader in bowling equipment. For the last two years, he was a Senior Director with TadaNow an innovative startup SaaS platform that connects data, creates

The aerosol community has not forgotten how, early in the pandemic, their urgent calls for WHO, CDC, and other agencies to acknowledge the possibility that COVID-19 could be spread through the air - and the tremendous opposition against those calls.   The reflections of the outgoing WHO chief scientist only offer further proof that how we view respiratory disease transmission has been fundamentally and permanently changed.  

Taza Aya was named one of 16 start-ups making an impact in University of Michigan, 2022’s Annual Impact Report Innovation.

The article is here: https://innovationpartnerships.umich.edu/stories/u-m-innovation-partnerships-reports-433-inventions-16-new-startups-during-fy22/ including a PDF of the winners. 

More evidence that mitigating airborne pathogens and maintaining healthful air is essential:  A Univ. of Michigan study finds that COVID transmission via air was ~1000 times more likely than via contaminated surfaces on campus:  https://news.umich.edu/at-u-m-risk-from-surface-contamination-of-covid-19-was-much-lower-than-air-transmission/

Important report from a National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) committee recommending future frameworks for expanding the availability of respiratory protection (historically, N95 masks but potentially newer approaches such as Taza Aya’s in the future) that go beyond the current limited list of professions to all workers potentially exposed to respiratory hazards (including airborne pathogens) and the public at large, including children.

A mandate for rethinking how we view - and what we demand of - personal respiratory

Herek Clack of Taza Aya is featured talking about Taza Aya’s solution at :55 seconds in this promotional video from University of Michigan’s Center for Entrepreneurship. 

Coronavirus loses 90% of its ability to infect us within 20 minutes of becoming airborne – with most of the loss occurring within the first five minutes, the world’s first simulations of how the virus survives in exhaled air suggest.

The findings re-emphasize the importance of short-range Covid transmission, with physical distancing and mask-wearing likely to be the most effective means of preventing infection. Ventilation, though still worthwhile, is likely to have a lesser impact.

“People have been focused on poorly ventilated spaces and thinking about airborne transmission over meters or across a room. I’m not saying that doesn’t happen, but I think still the greatest risk of exposure is when you’re close to someone,” said Prof