Sarmila Katuwal wears a cloth face covering and standard lab PPE while checking the phosphorous concentration of a designer biochar.
Sarmila Katuwal is involved in two research projects at ISTC. The first, led by B.J. Sharma, focuses on optimization of kraft lignin depolymerization. In the second, led by Wei Zheng, she is working on design of a biochar to capture dissolved phosphorous and ammonia nitrogen from tile drainage water.
Now that the state of Illinois has entered phase 4 of its COVID recovery plan and Katuwal is back in the lab, she talks about what has changed due to COVID-19.
Q. What precautions and safety procedures are you employing to reduce risk?
The new safety protocols and guidelines by ISTC has made our work lot easier during this crisis. I am strictly using a face mask, practicing social distancing, and avoiding using common spaces in the office, like the lunchroom and conference room. Also, I wear proper PPE (like gloves, lab coat, eye glass) while conducting my research in the lab and do frequent hand cleaning and sanitizing.
The new one-way traffic flow system in the office building and one-person-per-lab rule has helped to reduce the possibility of social contact. In addition, I strictly follow lab cleaning protocols, which involves sanitizing the instruments and work area before and after conducting the experiment.
Q. Are there new challenges that have arisen in the lab?
The new challenges are mostly getting accustomed to new health safety protocols and making sure to follow the procedures strictly to keep myself and others safe. Also, when wearing a face mask and eyeglass together, sometimes, if the face mask is not fitted properly your eyeglass becomes foggy.
I am happy with ISTC’s current protocols, and I hope they will continue, too.
ISTC postdoctoral researcher Kirtika Kohli is working on a project led by B.K. Sharma to develop novel catalysts for making chemicals from CO2. As the state of Illinois has entered phase 4 of COVID recovery, Kohli has been able to return to work in the lab while observing appropriate precautions, including wearing a face mask and following designated one-way paths while entering, leaving, and moving about the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center facility.
Only a single person works in the lab at a time, but Kohli says “Still I feel I need to be very careful, not for me only but for others, too.”
Q. What precautions and safety procedures are you employing to reduce risk while working in the lab?
When I enter the lab, I follow the standard lab safety procedures, including putting on a lab coat, a pair of gloves, and eye googles (to protect my eyes). I also disinfect all the lab surfaces, such as benchtops, fume hood, reactor surfaces, etc.
After I am done with my work in the lab, I clean the lab space and eye goggles with disinfectant, discard the gloves in a trash bag, remove my lab coat, and wash my hands with soap at least two times. As I am leaving the facility, I pass multiple disinfecting stations, so I make sure to use hand sanitizer each time.
As a researcher, our minds are often thinking about experiments, so the posted signs that explain the guidelines about room occupancy, restroom use, social distancing, etc. are good to remind us.
Following a single path to enter and a single path to exit the facility sometimes gives you a smile, like you are playing some game in which you need to follow red big signs!
Q. Are there new challenges that arise because of these precautions?
Wearing a mask all the time—sometimes it feels OK and sometimes it is irritating. The major challenge is to speak loudly while wearing a mask when you are in a conference call.
Angela DiAscro is a field chemist with the Institutional Water Treatment program, which provides water treatment advice to facilities with institutional water systems including cooling towers, chillers, boilers, etc. Like many people, she spent a large part of the spring working from home but has recently been able to resume field activities, while observing proper COVID-19 precautions.
Q. What is your role with the Institutional Water Treatment program?
I am a field chemist who travels throughout Illinois to sites, where I test boiler, cooling, softener water, etc. to make sure the systems have appropriate treatment levels. This helps the systems run more efficiently and have a longer lifespan. I often go to state police sites, correctional centers, veterans homes, some universities, and historical sites.
Q. Now that the state of Illinois has entered phase 4 of its COVID recovery plan and you’re back in the field, what precautions and safety procedures are you employing to reduce risk?
There are three of us who travel and each of us are, of course, wearing masks when we are at a site. We often interact with engineers at least part of the time we are on site and it is nice to see that many of the engineers are wearing masks, too.
Each of us have our own rental vehicles to travel and instead of renting them daily or weekly as we did previously, we rent them for a whole month to cut back on the number of different cars we interact with. We are currently training our newest field chemist, so instead of riding in the same car to sites, now he has to arrive in his own rental car and we do our best to stay 6 feet apart while we are at the site together.
We were not encouraged to stay in hotels when we started travelling again, either. Before the pandemic I would stay in one to two hotels a week for work, but now we are mostly doing day trips. Currently we have received the okay to stay in large chain hotels as long as we take disinfectant wipes/ sprays with us.
I keep hand sanitizer in the rental car and use it whenever I stop for food or gas. Before I leave a site, I wash my hands with soap and water for 20 seconds if it is available. I also try to use my own pen whenever I need to sign in or out at certain sites.
The bottom line though, is that we don’t need to do anything that we are not comfortable with (e.g. stay in a hotel, go to sites in high COVID areas), which I really appreciate.
Angie and her colleague Cameron observe appropriate precautions by using separate vehicles to travel to a site visit at Dickson Mounds State Museum.
Q. What new challenges do these unusual times and new precautions create?
Since we drive individual cars now and aren’t staying in hotels as often, I have had several 12+ hour days. My farthest site is ~3.5 hours away, in southern Illinois, so to do that in one day is already seven hours of travel. Without someone else in the car with you, it gets very tiring.
Many of the places we go do not have air conditioning and there is extra heat given off by the boiler or other systems present in the same room, so it can get above 95 degrees F. Now that I wear a mask while performing the site visit, I make sure I have water, a decent lunch, and hopefully a place to sit to take extra breaks while enduring the heat. Besides the heat, wearing a mask can be challenging because people can’t hear me, so I need to speak up.
Also, people can’t tell when I am smiling but hopefully they can see it from my eyes because I usually am!
Q. Is there anything else you’d like the institutions and people you work with to know?
I miss seeing a lot of people and it is harder to get simple questions answered or papers signed since I can’t just walk to someone’s office, but I’m glad people are taking this seriously and doing what we can to keep ourselves and others safe.
by Jeremy Overmann, Chemist & Water Treatment Specialist ISTC Institutional Water Treatment services group
The domestic plumbing systems in any building or part of a building that has been shut down or has experienced reduced use due to COVID-19 policies are at risk for causing disease and death due to the effects of increased water age, including corrosion and growth of bacteria. Before re-opening any such building, take steps to minimize these risks and include consultation with a licensed plumber.
The Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) has a general guidance document for returning these systems to regular use. In Attachment B (Section II, Step 2. b), IDPH recommends setting the water heater to at least 120 degrees F prior to flushing the domestic hot water plumbing.
We recommend a higher temperature of at least 142 degrees F as this will kill Legionella bacteria in the heater within 30 minutes. However, do not use water at this temperature for flushing if the building’s drain waste vent (DWV) materials and/or plumbing system components cannot handle this higher temperature.
WARNING: 142 degree F water can cause third degree burns in seconds. Note that Legionella bacteria can continue to grow at temperatures up to 122 degrees F.
The Environmental Science Policy and Research Institute has written a useful guidance document, Reducing Risk to Staff Flushing Buildings, which offers best practices for flushing building water systems in a way that keeps facility staff safe.
Use the IDPH guidance in conjunction with your facility’s Legionella Water Management Program (WMP). If none exists, we recommend writing a remediation and/or recommissioning plan, then later developing a full WMP. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) offers a free training program on how to write a WMP and a toolkit to assist in developing a WMP.
Additional recommendations
Drinking Fountains: If these were shut off and/or not used for a period of time, they should be cleaned according to the manufacturer’s instructions before being used again for drinking.
Chlorine levels: The Illinois EPA requires a minimum of 0.5 parts per million Free Chlorine or 1.0 parts per million Total chlorine (also called Combined chlorine) in drinking water, unless a facility has been given an exemption (this is rare, but applies in some cases to facilities supplied with clean well water).
After re-opening, we recommend maintaining 142 degrees F or higher in all domestic water heaters and storage tanks, and 124 degrees F or higher in all recirculating domestic hot water systems for the purpose of reducing the risk of Legionnaire’s Disease. Note that delivered water at fixtures must meet local and state plumbing codes for maximum safe temperature to prevent scalding. The best way to achieve Legionella risk reduction and anti-scalding is to maintain high temperature in tanks and recirculating systems and employ thermostatic mixing valves just prior to point of use fixtures.
Finally, we recommend documenting all actions you take to prepare facilities for re-opening.
About the Institutional Water Treatment services group
The Institutional Water Treatment (IWT) services group, a unit of the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center at the University of Illinois, provides unbiased, professional water treatment advice to facilities equipped with industrial water systems including cooling towers, chillers, boilers, etc. If you need assistance with addressing system start-up due to COVID-19 or other related services, including legionella monitoring, please contact Jeremy Overmann or Mike Springman.
