IAQ Radio

Don Weekes, CIH, CSP - IEQ Current Events Discussion

This week's IAQradio+ visits with an old friend of the show and one of our most active guests over the years Don Weekes, CIH, CSP. Don is a Certified Industrial Hygienist and Certified Safety Professional who has recently retired from InAIR Environmental which is based in Ottawa, ON. He is a Past President of IAQA, as well as Past President of the Ottawa Valley Chapter for ASHRAE.  Mr. Weekes is currently the President of the Indoor Environmental Quality - Global Alliance (IEQ-GA), and he also serves as a member of the Board of Directors for the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienist (ACGIH).
 
Don has also been involved with the following professional organizations; American Industrial Hygiene Association (AIHA), International Society of Indoor Air Quality (ISIAQ), and Canada Green Building Council (CaGBC). He is the past Chair of American Industrial of Hygiene Association (AIHA) Indoor Environmental Quality Committee and a Fellow of the Association. He is a four-time recipient of the AIHA's Best Seller award for the 'Report of the Microbial Task Force' in 2001 and 2002, the 'Assessment, Remediation and Post-Remediation Verification of Mold in Buildings' publication in 2004, and the Green Book, aka 'Recognition, Evaluation and Control of Indoor Mold, book in 2008.

IAQ Radio Classic: Pete Consigli & The Z-man – A History of the Restoration Industry Parts 1-3

This weeks IAQ Radio+ episode flashes back to interviews with Pete Consigli and the Z-man that conclude our series on the “History of Restoration” from the viewpoint of these two living legends. The interview started out as a retrospective conversation about their longtime relationship that spanned almost 4 decades, it ended up being a priceless discussion on the  “History of Restoration”, from their perspective in the trenches. These shows were personal, insightful and controversial at times, but most of all come from the heart with a spirit of setting the record straight on many of the industry’s misnomers and folklore! Listen in as two of the industry’s most well known and colorful personalities sit down to reflect on their professional life together as they come to the realization that in their twilight years there is still much to be done and their “work” is still in progress! Join us for a peak into Consigli and Zlotnik’s Restoration Journey with a destination yet to be realized.

FLASHBACK FRIDAY – Ellen Tohn – Tohn Environmental Strategies Health and Home Performance: A Game Changer – Original Air Date: Episode 457 | 4-21-17

This week we flashback to Ellen Tohn of Tohn Environmental Strategies. Ms. Tohn is an environmental health consultant with over 30 years of experience. She is a nationally recognized expert in housing based environmental health threats, green and healthy housing, and indoor air quality. Ms. Tohn works with housing developers, owners and managers to create green and healthy housing and developed the nationally recognized “One Touch” approach.  She has assisted health advocates catalyze policy solutions; designed energy efficiency programs incorporating health protections; and managed environmental health research studies.
Ms. Tohn served as an advisor on health issues to the US Green Building Council’s LEED program, Enterprise Green Communities, Delos Living, EPA, Department of Energy, Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), and numerous green building programs. Ms. Tohn is a nationally recognized trainer, providing professional development to over 7,000 individuals.  She received her BA from Cornell University and a Masters from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Ms. Tohn is also an Assistant Professor of Practice at the Brown School of Public Health. Home Performance professionals are becoming much more focused on indoor air quality and that focus is a game changer for their industry and possibly the IAQ world.

FLASHBACK FRIDAY Paul Francisco University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Ventilation and IAQ

For a full transcript of the discussion.
 

Chuck Violand, Ross Riek, Owen Boak and The Restoration Global Watchdog!

This past June RIA held its first International restoration conference and trade show on Australia’s beautiful Sunshine Coast. The event which will be an annual offering in the region was organized and delivered by RIA’s Australasian Council. The local RIA conference planning committee collaborated with the Australian IAQA chapter leadership and featured several education sessions by local leading IAQ experts. Mold seemed to be a hot topic at the conference with several labs exhibiting at the trade show! The event was also attended by IICRC leadership and several other regional dignitaries from related segments of the cleaning, restoration and remediation industries.

Whitney Wiseman - National Organization of Restoration and Remediation Professionals

This week on IAQradio+ we welcome Whitney Wiseman.  Whitney Wiseman started in the restoration industry back in 2004. He began as a laborer for a family restoration company while still in college. While working with this company for three and a half years, he eventually climbed the ladder to become the operations manager. He was able to help grow the company into a large national company still existing today. Whitney started his company in 2008 in Miami while in school for construction management at Florida International University. One year later he decided to move his company to Palm Beach and has been established there ever since. Now the multi division company performs restoration, remediation, drying, construction, and specialty cleaning services. Whitney has personally traveled to flooding events around the country working on small and large losses in Cedar Rapids, Minot, ND, Atlanta, Chicago, Orlando, Houston (twice), Galveston, New York City, New Jersey and the Florida Keys. He holds all restoration & remediation accreditations available from the IICRC and specializes in commercial losses. 
 
Whitney's passion for the restoration and remediation industry compelled him to form the nonprofit organization NORRP or National Organization of Restoration and Remediation Professionals in 2017. His goal is to provide support to the industry as he has personally faced the challenges that professionals encounter on a daily basis. He intends to bring the industry to the next level through training, outreach, and support of his fellow restoration & remediation professionals.

Nick Hurst - US EPA, Indoor Environments Division - The EPA Indoor airPLUS Program

This week on IAQradio+ we welcome Nick Hurst. Nick is an Environmental Protection Specialist with the US EPA and the Program Manager of EPA's Indoor airPLUS label for new homes. He has been involved in the construction industry for over 17 years as a self-employed remodeling contractor, project manager, green building consultant, and trainer.
 
Nick earned a Master's in Technology concentrating in Building Science from Appalachian State University in Boone, NC, and he later served as Education and Outreach Director for the North Carolina Energy Efficiency Alliance at ASU's Energy Center. Before coming to EPA, Nick also worked as a consultant at ICF in their Federal Energy Efficiency portfolio.
 
Nick is also a BPI Building Analyst and participates with a number of standard setting organizations and technical committees in the building industry.

HOMEChem Open House - House Observations of Microbial and Environmental Chemistry

This week on IAQradio+ will be broadcasting live from the Open House event for the HOMEChem study at the University of Texas Austin's, J.J. Pickle Research Campus. The HOMEChem experiment (House Observations of Microbial and Environmental Chemistry) incorporates state-of-the-art measurements performed by over 20 investigators and their teams from the fields of chemistry, microbiology, and engineering. This experiment engages far more institutions and disciplines than ever applied to the study of a home. This research study is sponsored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Chemistry of Indoor Environments Program and it will take place this summer at the University of Texas at Austin's UTest House. 
 
Our guests for this special show are Marina Vance (HOMEChem Co-PIs / organizer) Delphine Farmer (HOMEChem Co-PIs / organizer) Atila Novoselac (HOMEChem host, specialist on the UTest house) Rich Corsi (HOMEChem host, indoor air specialist)
 
Richard L. Corsi, PhD
Dr. Richard L. Corsi is the Joe J. King Chair in Engineering #2 in the Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering (CAEE) at The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin). He has served on the faculty of CAEE at UT Austin for nearly 25 years, after starting his career in the School of Engineering at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. Dr. Corsi is highly regarded as an educator. He has received numerous teaching awards, and in 2015 was inducted into the Academy of Distinguished Teachers, an honor held for the top 5% of teachers across UT Austin. He also received a Regents' Outstanding Teaching Award for the entire UT system in 2016.
 
Dr. Corsi's research focuses on sources, physics and chemistry of indoor air pollution, particularly as related to pollutant interactions with indoor materials and innovative strategies for using such interactions to reduce human exposure to air pollution of both outdoor and indoor origin. He has served as principal investigator on over 70 projects, as major advisor to over 50 undergraduate and 70 graduate students, and as co-author on over 300 journal/conference papers, reports, and book chapters. His work has been featured in National Geographic, The Economist, Business Week, National Wildlife, Prevention, Men's Health, National Public Radio's Science Friday, Science Studio, the Academic Minute, the Canadian television series The Nature of Things, and more.
 
Delphine Farmer, PhD
Dr. Delphine Farmer is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Colorado State University. Her research focuses on building new instrumentation to measure reactive trace gases and particles in the atmosphere in order to understand how humans are changing our environment. She is particularly interested in the emissions from forests, and has recently taken the dive into the complex world of indoor chemistry.
 
Dr. Farmer grew up in Canada, and received her BSc in Chemistry from McGill University in Montreal. She moved to warmer climates to earn her Master's in Environmental Science, Policy and Management and her PhD in Chemistry, both from the University of California at Berkeley. Her research focused on using laser spectroscopy to study forest-atmosphere interactions. Delphine then held a NOAA Climate and Global Change Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Colorado Boulder, working with aerosol mass spectrometers in forests in the Brazilian Amazon and California's Sierra Nevada mountains.
 
Atila Novoselac, PhD
Dr. Atila Novoselac is a Professor in the Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. He holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Belgrade University and in 2005 received his PhD in Architectural Engineering from the Pennsylvania State University. The ultimate goal of his research is to improve buildings with respect to their impact on occupants' health and overall energy performance. He conducts both fundamental and applied research that leads to healthy and efficient buildings. Specifically, his work focuses on: (1) investigating transport phenomena in buildings that influence human exposure to airborne pollutants and pathogens, and (2) developing methods to improve the thermal characteristics and energy performance of building systems. His research is merging the energy, indoor environment, and human exposure aspects of buildings for developing integrated design/operation solutions. He teaches courses on the subjects of building mechanical systems, building physics, and advanced measuring and modeling techniques for performance analysis of building environmental control systems. He is an active member of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning (ASHRAE) and, as a chair or voting member on several of ASHRAE's technical committees, he is contributing to developing/advancing building codes and standards. Beside fellowships and awards, his research and advising work has been well recognized in academia as many of his PhD students have received prestigious positions at universities with top programs in building energy and environment related fields.
 
Marina Vance, PhD
Dr. Marina Vance is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering with a courtesy appointment in the Environmental Engineering Program at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research is focused on applying engineering tools to better understand and minimize human exposure to novel environmental contaminants from everyday activities and the use of consumer products. Her group focuses on the physical and chemical characterization of ultrafine aerosols, or nanoparticles in air.
 
Before joining CU Boulder, she was the Associate Director of the Virginia Tech Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology (VTSuN) and Deputy Director of the VT National Center for Earth and Environmental Nanotechnology Infrastructure (NanoEarth).
 
Dr. Vance received her PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Virginia Tech in 2012 for studying the release of nanomaterials, especially silver nanoparticles, from the use of everyday consumer products. She received her Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Environmental Engineering by the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (Florianópolis, Brazil).

Radio Joe & Bob Krell Report LIVE - IAQA Mid Atlantic Conference - Eva King, PhD & Wei Tang, PhD

This week on IAQradio+ and Healthy Indoors Magazine are coordinating on a live show from the IAQA Mid Atlantic Conference in Princeton, New Jersey. Today's guests include Eva King, PhD and Wei Tang, PhD.    
Dr. Eva King, CIEC is the Principal Scientist and Founder of AURA EnviroScience. Eva received her Masters degree in Biochemistry from the University of Bielefeld, Germany, and her Doctorate from the University of Oxford, UK. She has been involved in investigations and research into indoor environments and health, allergens, asthma and immunology for over 10 years, and has developed a wide range of new methods for exposure assessment. She has helped clients in different industry sectors, accelerating product development and validation, and assisted in clinical trials and other research studies. Her work has been published in many peer-reviewed scientific publications. Eva is an active member of the indoor air quality, industrial hygiene, and allergy research communities, and served on the Board of Directors of IAQA, and as Convention Committee Chair between 2013 and 2017. 
 
Dr. Wei Tang is the founder, President and Laboratory Director of QLab in Metuchen, New Jersey. Dr. Tang graduated from Cornell University with his Master and Ph.D. degrees in Soil Microbiology. He has conducted numerous research projects in Cornell University Soil Microbiology Laboratory in using microorganisms for bioremediation of environmental organic pollutants. His work in recent years has been focused on microbiological sampling and analysis methods for indoor environmental quality assessment. He has taught professional development courses and presented frequently at national conferences on analysis of indoor microorganisms and also on various topics including investigation and remediation of microbial growth in indoor environment. Dr. Tang is the inventor of several advanced microbial sampling devices including AccuScience Triple Gel-Tape, Sweep-Swab and Sponge-Swab. He also developed several advanced analytical methods such as AccuScience High Performance Spore Count and AccuScience Triplicate Analysis. Dr. Tang served on IAQA Board of Directors for three terms. He is currently the IAQA Trenton Chapter Director.

Claudette Hanks Reichel, Ed.D - Building Science & Housing Resilience: Bringing Research to Practice

This week on IAQradio+ we welcome Dr. Claudette Hanks Reichel for a discussion on building science, LaHouse, resilience and bringing research to practice.  Dr. Hanks Reichel is Professor and Extension Housing Specialist with Louisiana State University AgCenter. She serves as Director of LaHouse Resource Center, a public exhibit of multiple high performance housing solutions and hub of Extension education programs to advance resource-efficient, durable and healthy housing for the southern climate and natural hazards.
 
Reichel has developed numerous educational outreach programs and resources relating to housing, including energy-efficiency, healthy homes, hurricane and flood resilience and others. She has authored more than 100 Extension publications, presented at numerous professional events, was twice a featured speaker at the National Building Museum in Washington DC, and has received 12 national and state level awards for program excellence and impact.