Increasing Air Force Personnel Health and Mission Effectiveness through Air Quality Testing and Aerosol Simulants

The focus of this proposal is the Edwards Air Force Base in California. Specifically, Edwards Air Force Base needs to ensure air quality for its facilities to ensure the health of its personnel as they perform the regular activities, plus to improve air quality if standards are not being met. To do so, Medical Group personnel need to be able to test the indoor air quality regularly and quickly and to undertake HVAC systems remediations based on accurate data analytics. The requirement for the Air Force is to verify the effectiveness of ventilation and filtrations systems in removing indoor air contaminants by performing DNA-based verification tests and analyses on site and use the SafeTraces software technology to identify and understand problem areas in its facilities. Based on the results, the Air Force will be able to devise HVAC systems upgrades that then will be verified with a follow up test. A new rapid test method will greatly accelerate the time to analysis for the Air Force teams so that identified issues can quickly be addressed.