///// How safe are our cars in terms of Cornoa virus protection / HEPA filter? ////

[Andyinchville1]

Hi All,

I do a lot of courier driving and have even been to the corona virus capitol NYC recently.

While I take all safety precautions while outside the vehicle , I sometimes have to drive into and from corona hot spots.

Assuming good weather striping and windows up, how safe are we inside our cars ? I know the cabin air filter is not a HEPA filter but maybe because it is thick and pleated it is better than we think?
I thought about taking a home furnace HEPA filter from lowes and modding it as a pre filter to the stock cabin filter ....being that there are a lot of modders / tinkerers on here has anybody already done that ? If so, I'd be interested in hearing what you did and how you did it ... Also, would the added restriction some how mess up the motor by making it work harder to suck in air ?
I thought about putting a light coating of lube on the weather stripping to be sticky to catch small particles that may try to squeeze in but that would be (or could be messy) and I would have to make sure it didn't harm rubber or paint).

Admittedly, I did not wear a mask inside the car when inside NYC but thinking maybe I should have ?

FWIW - I am ordering a half face respirator (I figure better than surgical masks because I still feel air exiting in areas around the edges so I am assuming air out means air in during inhaling and since they may be better than N95 masks also due to potentially better sealing).

I am researching full face masks also in case the virus mutates and becomes even deadlier ... Goog luck all .... stay safe!

Andrew

 

[rhinorear]

Well I wouldn't stop there. I'm sure you need to disinfect the whole interior of the car. I would also worry aboot the door handles, hatch latch and fuel door being contaminated also.


I'm sure there is a statistic somewhere mentioning total contractions and death from in car contaminations just to lazy to look.


He!! just put the car in the incinerator with all the rest of your PPE and call it good.

 

[BobnOH]

The cabin air filter will help some, but it's not N95 spec, you'll be fine.
Spraying common areas with disinfectant after each day might be wise. The grocery store just sprays it on, leaves it wet. You'll want to be sure it doesn't damage any surfaces, can wipe it off, a lot more work. Passenger should wear a mask, or you'll want one of those N95 masks. You know the rest. You'll be fine. This is good advice for any Uber/Lyft drivers, a lot of your riders will be travelers.

 

[eddieleephd]

If you're solely courier driving your at risk between the car and the car. Disinfectant wipes are a good idea for entering places. Use them to open doors and what not.
Unless people are sneezing into your vehicle you really don't have any worries, other than people touching your door handles and bring infected.
It's a virus just like any other it can't travel alone.
It can however live in surfaces for up to three days and that's your greatest concern.
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[rhinorear]

Andrew here are 2 more suggestions. I can't take credit because these are from 2 of my experts I have on staff -



1] From chuppie. He drives a filthy assed VW diesel spewing particulate emissions and he is worried about Covid19 ? Tell him to route his tailpipe into his cabin and his VW Coal Roller will kill all the viruses. Not only will you now be driving around in a pressurized environment, that environment should surely take care of any Fluhan Whu that gets in to the cabin.


And #2] From filmfan. Not sure why I am adding to this conversation, but here goes;
The HEPA filter for Festool vacs is roughly the same size as the cabin filter in the Passat I had until earlier this year. It might be feasible to adapt one to the other. Any Festool dealer will carry the filter or be able to order it. They cost around 70$'s, which is cheap for anything that says "Festool" on it.


Thank you rhinorear, chuppie and flimfan. You're welcome Andrew

 

[Dh4276]

I’m a paramedic working with possible vivid pts at times. Sanitizing and washining your hands is best. Vivid is passed by contact of droplets through fluids. So you would have to get droplets in your mouth, eyes, or open wounds.

I would say you have a high chance of getting in the car from opening and closing doors then through the ventilation system on the car honestly.

Just make sure to sanitize your hands real well prior to getting in the car or touching things in the car, also don’t touch your face before sanitizing after a drop off. You should be fine. The danger is in the droplet for, it’s not just floating around.


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[Matt927]

My wife is a healthcare worker and had been working with COVID positive patients in the "Virus Capitol" for months.

Use common sense, it should get you through.

 

[Mongler98]

get out of here with this crap

 

[ToxicDoc]

get out of here with this crap

If you don't like the topic, stay out of it. He's asking a legitimate question.

 

[ToxicDoc]

Hi All,

I do a lot of courier driving and have even been to the corona virus capitol NYC recently.

While I take all safety precautions while outside the vehicle , I sometimes have to drive into and from corona hot spots.

Assuming good weather striping and windows up, how safe are we inside our cars ? I know the cabin air filter is not a HEPA filter but maybe because it is thick and pleated it is better than we think?
I thought about taking a home furnace HEPA filter from lowes and modding it as a pre filter to the stock cabin filter ....being that there are a lot of modders / tinkerers on here has anybody already done that ? If so, I'd be interested in hearing what you did and how you did it ... Also, would the added restriction some how mess up the motor by making it work harder to suck in air ?
I thought about putting a light coating of lube on the weather stripping to be sticky to catch small particles that may try to squeeze in but that would be (or could be messy) and I would have to make sure it didn't harm rubber or paint).

Admittedly, I did not wear a mask inside the car when inside NYC but thinking maybe I should have ?

FWIW - I am ordering a half face respirator (I figure better than surgical masks because I still feel air exiting in areas around the edges so I am assuming air out means air in during inhaling and since they may be better than N95 masks also due to potentially better sealing).

I am researching full face masks also in case the virus mutates and becomes even deadlier ... Goog luck all .... stay safe!

Andrew

Dh4276 gave you good advice. It's extremely unlikely you're going to get COVID from just driving in a region. While the virus can live *indoors* for a few days, outdoors exposed to sunlight it dies much quicker. Also, the world will know if this thing mutates long before it would happen to mutate and only get you. if the car is your own, I'd have no worries. If you are driving other cars as part of your job, with an N95 mask, open the windows and use surface disinfectants on all the control surfaces, buttons, steering wheel, etc. Then sit back and put your worries aside.

As for modifying the intake for a pre-filter, don't bother unless you are driving your car inside a hospital infectious disease unit. The particles are readily diluted below infectious levels in the outside atmosphere and then killed off by the UV light from the sun.

 

[Dh4276]

Dh4276 gave you good advice. It's extremely unlikely you're going to get COVID from just driving in a region. While the virus can live *indoors* for a few days, outdoors exposed to sunlight it dies much quicker. Also, the world will know if this thing mutates long before it would happen to mutate and only get you. if the car is your own, I'd have no worries. If you are driving other cars as part of your job, with an N95 mask, open the windows and use surface disinfectants on all the control surfaces, buttons, steering wheel, etc. Then sit back and put your worries aside.

As for modifying the intake for a pre-filter, don't bother unless you are driving your car inside a hospital infectious disease unit. The particles are readily diluted below infectious levels in the outside atmosphere and then killed off by the UV light from the sun.

One thing I do when I’m driving the ambulance is to open the door before removing my gloves, then remove them before touching anything inside the unit. We also clean and disinfect the unit after each run. We don’t know results for a week or more when we have a suspected vivid pt, plus what else they might have.


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[ToxicDoc]

Opening your doors and letting the thing ventilate then getting all the surfaces is crucial between runs. We never had these issues years ago when I was a medic. Now in the hospital I'm in a freakin' space suit to intubate.

 

[Dh4276]

Opening your doors and letting the thing ventilate then getting all the surfaces is crucial between runs. We never had these issues years ago when I was a medic. Now in the hospital I'm in a freakin' space suit to intubate.

I actually got “spoken” to the other day because I intubated in the field on a cardiac arrest, were not supposed too because of the covid stuff...it’s hard to not do it though. I know we clean a lot more and detailed now then we did 3 moths ago. It really hurts turn-around time.


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[ToxicDoc]

Locally we're instructing crews to do the entire code on site unless in public view. I'm also advising a fairly liberal approach to not resuscitate. 3 out of 4 intubated, not even in arrest, don't survive. Add a weak heart that stopped and the odds of surviving plummet further. Not worth the risk to everyone involved and futile imo.

 

[Dh4276]

Locally we're instructing crews to do the entire code on site unless in public view. I'm also advising a fairly liberal approach to not resuscitate. 3 out of 4 intubated, not even in arrest, don't survive. Add a weak heart that stopped and the odds of surviving plummet further. Not worth the risk to everyone involved and futile imo.

I agree, last one I had arrested in front of me and family during initial assessment. I’ve only worked 2 arrest once the pat year.


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[Mongler98]

If you don't like the topic, stay out of it. He's asking a legitimate question.

although it might have merit, its not about a filter, its about hand to face exposure that is the issue. air filter is going to do NOTHING and is a waste of money and doing more harm by putting you and others at risk because of bad info on how to prevent this virus and ultimately gets the guard down of whoever thinks a cabin air filter can do anything.
i hate to see this filth of lack of knowledge of how a virus is millions of times smaller than any air filter you can put against your face or even your car, heck even a condom wont even come close to stopping a virus from passing though.
The only filtering it can do is from trapping moisture that holds the virus, but when it dries out... not so much. running the AC would be MUCH more effective.

“We don’t yet have direct evidence that filtration works to reduce transmission of the novel coronavirus,” says Jeffrey Siegel, an indoor air quality expert and professor of civil engineering at the University of Toronto who has researched portable air purifiers with various airborne particles.

https://www.consumerreports.org/air-purifiers/what-to-know-about-air-purifiers-and-coronavirus/

How an Air Purifier Could Capture the Coronavirus
HEPA filters are very effective, certified to capture 99.97 percent of particles that are precisely 0.3 micron in diameter. (Particles that size are perfectly suited to maneuver through the filter’s fibers, while larger and smaller particles, because of the various ways they move in the air, crash into the structure.)

The novel coronavirus itself is 0.125 microns, but Marr says the droplets it travels in—when people cough, talk, or breathe—initially are larger, around 1 micron. That's a size easily captured by HEPA filters.

James Dickerson, CR’s chief science officer echoes the consensus that air purifiers could help in some situations, but with a caveat: “HEPA filters are very efficient at catching coronavirus-size particles, but the particles must first physically travel to the filter,” he says.

That means an air purifier has to be capable of consistently drawing in enough air to reduce the amount of virus particles in the air. The faster an air purifier can cycle air through the filter, the better its chances of catching virus particles. You can see how fast an air purifier cleans the surrounding air by looking for its CADR (clean air delivery rate) number on the packaging.

CADR reflects, in cubic feet per minute, the volume of clean air that an air purifier produces at its highest speed setting. At lower speeds, the rate a machine is able to clean air decreases. The packaging should have three CADR ratings, one for smoke, dust, and pollen, which represent small, medium, or large particles, respectively. For example, a purifier with a CADR of 250 for smoke reduces smoke particle levels to the same concentration that would be achieved by adding 250 cubic feet of clean air each minute. (Smoke particles are similar in size to the smallest virus droplets while larger droplets are closer to the pollen size range.)

Based on CR's lab tests of air purifiers, we recommend looking for a model with a CADR over 240, which can perform roughly five air exchanges per hour in its suggested room size. In our tests, these air purifiers perform well for quickly removing particles of all sizes from the air. All the models we highlight below have a CADR over 240.

One practical matter to consider, however, is that you may not want to run an air purifier on its highest speed setting (in order to achieve the highest CADR). Air purifiers can be quite loud, especially at higher speeds, and that can disturb the sick person’s sleep. Here at CR we measure air purifiers’ noise levels in decibels and rate that trait. The models we highlight perform well removing particles even at lower, quieter speeds.

Even the most efficient air purifiers can’t prevent some droplets from landing on surfaces, where they can live for hours or even days according to early research at the National Institutes of Health. So to help prevent the spread of the virus in your house, you should clean your home and wash your hands frequently, too.


reality sets in and just simply washing your hands will do 90% of the work. having any passengers and the driver if there is a passenger wearing a mask will stop some of the droplets of moisture but not filter out a virus. only if the mask is saturated with moisture will it work some and that's if its sealed 100% to the face, and even then they are only good for up to a max of 20 minutes if there HEPA grade.

TLDR, viruses are too small to be filtered out of the air in most cases (unless you go full military grade) so don't count on it doing anything useful enough to stop the spread of it putting a MASSIVE fan with a hepa filter and a fogger with a disinfectant might do some good but thats full rere if you get my drift, you never go full rere.
. roll down your windows.

 

[turbobrick240]

It's pretty much a death sentence. Just pin the throttle to the floor and assume all pedestrians are zombies. Just kidding. I wouldn't worry about it too much as long as you practice good hygiene and social distance as much as practicable.

 

[KLXD]

I can't even find a fookin dust mask to sand some drywall because people think it'll protect them from a virus.

 

[eddieleephd]

The mask works if everyone wears them and isn't intended to protect the person wearing it. It's meant to protect everyone else around them by trapping the moisture particles that could be contaminated.
That includes surgical masks. The doctor wears it to prevent contamination of the opening of the patient.
The trick is for masks to work everyone needs to wear them.

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[rhinorear]

Speaking of mask I almost threw up a little in the back of my throat when I saw that Ford commercial last night about them patting themselves on their back because they are making 1 million masks a day. I guess they are shipping all them to other places besides NM and CA. I would think by now Ford would have us awash in PPE if that is in fact true

 

[ezshift5]

Thanks ToxicDoc..............
Your paramedic approach to sanitize car door prior entry does it for me.
all the best,
ez

 

[ToxicDoc]

Thanks ToxicDoc..............
Your paramedic approach to sanitize car door prior entry does it for me.
all the best,
ez

I mentioned opening the windows too. You want a couple of air exchanges along with the surface cleaning. Then you're good.

 

[Andyinchville1]

Andrew here are 2 more suggestions. I can't take credit because these are from 2 of my experts I have on staff -



1] From chuppie. He drives a filthy assed VW diesel spewing particulate emissions and he is worried about Covid19 ? Tell him to route his tailpipe into his cabin and his VW Coal Roller will kill all the viruses. Not only will you now be driving around in a pressurized environment, that environment should surely take care of any Fluhan Whu that gets in to the cabin.


And #2] From filmfan. Not sure why I am adding to this conversation, but here goes;
The HEPA filter for Festool vacs is roughly the same size as the cabin filter in the Passat I had until earlier this year. It might be feasible to adapt one to the other. Any Festool dealer will carry the filter or be able to order it. They cost around 70$'s, which is cheap for anything that says "Festool" on it.


Thank you rhinorear, chuppie and flimfan. You're welcome Andrew

Thanks for the lead on Festool , I had not thought about the possibility of a literal drop in (sure saves thinking of how to engineer something cobbled together but then again cobbled together looks to possibly be significantly cheaper but I will see if I can contact them to see what is available).

Without having to run to the auto parts store to measure a cabin air filter for a Mark IV Jetta Cabin Filter by chance would anybody have those dimensions handy ? (if I have time tomorrow I may run to Lowes and see how expensive a furnace HEPA filter is I may be able to cut and silicone a filter together but admittedly a turn key solution may be nice tho somewhat more expensive --- Where's that 2nd stimulus check when you need it ?! ;-)

Andrew

 

[ToxicDoc]

The Hepa filter is paranoia in action. Forget it. You aren't driving inside a hazmat tunnel.

 

[bryanmabbott]

Drive with the recirculation on should cut out a lot of the outside air coming in.

 

[Mike_04GolfTDI]

N95 masks don’t actually filter out the virus. What they are able to do is catch tiny water droplets that contain the virus, like from a sneeze.

An N95 mask filters 95% of particles larger than 0.3 microns. The coronavirus is less than 0.1 microns. It will easily go though the mask unless suspended in a water droplet.

After the water dries up though, you’ve got virus particles that could make it through the mask. This is fine in a hospital setting where you wear the mask for fifteen minutes while dealing with a patient, and then throw the mask away. If you plan to wear the same mask all day, it won’t help you much.

Wearing an N95 mask all day will protect others by catching what you sneeze out, but it won’t protect you. Wearing one inside your car won’t do anything if you’re alone in the car.

The cabin air filter in your car will not protect you either. Maybe if you could install a strong UV-C germicidal lamp in your cabin filter housing, that may help by inactivating any pathogens that pass by. 36 watts would probably do it.

Anyway, masks protect others from you, not you from others.

True protection would require a biohazard suit with specialized filtration. It wouldn’t be cheap, or comfortable.

 

[turbobrick240]

Unless somebody with Covid gets in the car with you or sneezes in through an open window, you aren't at any risk driving around. A single inhaled virus particle or two or three aren't nearly enough to transmit infection. It's when you get out of the car that you need to be mindful.

 

[JELLOWSUBMARINE]

I can appreciate the concern some may have but though time and the facts are showing this whole thing has been an overhyped scare job for political and so many other "why let a crisis go to wasate" narritives.

Im not saying its not real, but that it is just a "designer" flu (virus) that hits certain groups extra hard hard. The yearly flu (mutates every year) claims up to 60,000 lives in the U.S. alone (6% motality rate). The corona virus figures are being grossly exagerated to attempt to acomplish the crazy numbers originally put out. They do this now by using a death from other causes and if ANY way possible attaching "covid 19" to it. For example if you pass with stage 4 cancer but are A symptomatic... Its now corona virus death!

I personally refuse to hide under the table and subscribe to the use of commmon sense cleanliness practice. The mask, glove and full body condom wearing germaphobes have weakened there imune system by hiding from any and everything.

Be clean, safe and careful... But live life

 

[KLXD]

Harumph

 

[AndyBees]

Well, here's my two cents on the topic. (Yep, I've followed the stories from day one.)

My wife and I are in that age group that the Virus hits the hardest.
So, we use a mask in public. If we are going from one place to another, we just leave the mask on (grocery to the pharmacy, for example). We've always kept hand sanitizer in our vehicles. When we get back in our vehicle, we immediately use the hand sanitizer and also smear it on anything we touched on the way into the vehicle. (Good luck with the social distancing.)

This time of the year, your car sitting in a blacktop parking lot at the Mall will get hot enough to kill the virus.

Any filter is better than none. The Virus doesn't have legs. Photos I've seen it looks like it might be one side of Velcro. Thus, if it hits a three layer mask it is highly likely it will slam into one of those fibers and become stuck (how long will it live there?). Like someone said previously, the mask is primarily for protecting others. But, if you've had it on for a while the fibers become moist, thus, seems it would likely be a benefit to you.

I don't think wearing a mask or any of the other protective garb for a few minutes daily is going to negatively affect anyone's immune system .... basically impossible. If that be true, then that is an admission that the garb works.

OP, I agree with what someone posted previously, get the filter with the activated carbon.

I lost a cousin to the Virus about three weeks ago! She had knee surgery and was sent to a nursing home for rehab. There, she contracted the virus and it wasted her in about 11 days.