Blog & News

Despite the unprecedented April power outage on the Iberian peninsula providing an unnerving welcome to Madrid, Taza Aya’s appearance on Spain’s El Hormiguero television show was a great success.  Many thanks to Sara Portabales and the EH crew who were unbelievably supportive and welcoming.  See the clip from the show here.

Taza Aya manned a booth at the Midwest Allied Poultry Industries (MAPI) winter seminar in Hudsonville, MI in February.  Attendees represented egg layers, broilers, turkey and other poultry producers from the region.  High on the list of topics was high path. avian influenza that continues to spread through animal production facilities, both dairy and poultry.

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

We’re grateful to see Taza Aya’s unique solution reaching an audience beyond those we would normally reach.  Tech Briefs TV is an outlet of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Media Group.

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

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

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

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 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.  

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