Dr. Robert Redfield, who ran the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during the second half of President Donald Trump’s presidency, has found new work in the private sector.
Redfield, who left office with Trump in January, is now a strategic health and safety adviser for Big Ass Fans, a charity based in Lexington, Kentucky.
Big Ass fans advocate a ‘clean air system’ that they say reduces coronavirus infection by 95 percent – and kills 99.9 percent of the pathogens.
Dr. Robert Redfield, who served as head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under former President Donald Trump, is now a health and safety adviser for Big Ass supporters
Big Ass Fan’s industrial ‘Clean Air System’ uses ion technology that some researchers say releases ozone and other by-products
In a press release, Redfield points to Big Ass fans as “leaders in designing airflow systems and making places where we live, work and play safer.”
“Proper ventilation plays an important role in mitigating the transmission of COVID-19 and other respiratory pathogens,” Redfield also said.
He follows Trump’s coronavirus task advisor, dr. Deborah Birx, to the air purification sector when she joined the company ActivePure last month.
For industrial or commercial spaces, Big Ass fans say, it uses ion-disinfection technology while selling fan systems that use UV-C light for homes and businesses.
Kaiser Health News reported on Monday about Redfield’s job shift, pointing out that academic experts were investigating Big Ass Fan’s ‘virus-killing’ ion technology.
“There’s no other way to say it, it’s completely unproven whether these devices will work in a real environment,” Timothy Bertram, a professor of chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told Kaiser Health News.
‘If they give you 99,999 percent, it’s a red flag for any scientist. We know nothing to that extent, ‘he continued. “It’s not nuts.”
Bertram studied aerosol particles and when he looked at ion- and hydroxyl-releasing devices, he found that some release ozone, which can worsen asthma.
The Environmental Protection Agency also warned about the ability of bipolar ionization to generate ozone and other by-products when used indoors.
“Anything that destroys a virus could possibly do other chemistry,” Delphine Farmer, an associate professor at Colorado State University specializing in atmospheric and indoor chemistry, told Kaiser Health News.
William Bahnfleth, a professor of architectural engineering at Penn State who studies indoor quality and leads the American Association for Epidemic Task Force of the Association of Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Engineers, told Kaiser that Big Ass fans were trying to be more faithful to the systems. than its competitors, but the studies have so far been incomplete.
This is because the company did not measure potential gas products.
Brent Stephens, an expert in indoor air quality who heads the Division of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology, reflected Kaiment’s sentiment.
“They are still doing nothing to address potential adverse effects of exposure to chemical by-products,” he told the Health Wire Service.
He said the test rooms used (which do not include any people or furniture) would not produce accurate, real results.
Bertram also said that no system he studied performed better than a HEPA filter, which is the standard advice, along with a MERV-13 filter in a heating system and increased ventilation outside.
A spokesman for Big Ass Fans, Alex Risen, told Kaiser that the ionization technology does not release ozone or other by-products and does not ‘put bad things in your lungs’.
Risen said ions occur naturally.
“We know we are not delivering any negative products,” he said. “We know you have no negative consequences when you are busy.”
Redfield made headlines last month when he sat down with CNN’s Sanjay Gupta for the documentary network on coronavirus doctors, saying he believes COVID-19 has its origins in a Chinese laboratory.
“I’m of the opinion that I still think the most likely etiology of this pathogen in Wuhan was from a laboratory,” Redfield said. “The other people do not believe it. It is good. Science will eventually figure it out. ‘