Can Plexiglass Stop COVID?

Sept. eight, 2020 — When the World Overall health Firm declared COVID-19 a pandemic in mid-March, the administration at Milt & Edie’s Drycleaners in Burbank, CA, realized they wanted to defend their staff and consumers. They mandated masks and hung plastic shields at just about every workstation in which consumers fall off clothing. The shields allow consumers and staff to see each individual other and converse conveniently, but not stress about obtaining sneezed on or coughed on.

“We set up people virtually immediately,” states Al Luevanos, a supervisor at the cleaners. And it’s not unnoticed by staff. “It would make me truly feel safer, realizing I do the job for persons who treatment not only about the wellbeing of the consumers but also the staff,” states Kayla Stark, an employee.

Plexiglass partitions are seemingly all over the place these days — grocery outlets, dry cleaners, cafe pickup home windows, price cut outlets, and pharmacies. They are recommended by the CDC and the Occupational Security and Overall health Administration (OSHA), among other folks.

“Grocers were being among the to start with merchants to adopt the plexiglass barrier,” states Dave Heylen, a spokesperson for the California Grocers Association, Sacramento, an business group that signifies about 300 retail businesses operating over 7,000 outlets. Practically all grocers did so, he states, with no any official recommendation from the association.

That’s also accurate nationwide, states Jim Dudlicek, a spokesperson for the National Grocers Association, in Arlington, VA, with much more than 1,500 associates from the retail and wholesale grocery business. The association polled associates when the pandemic strike and discovered that 84% of people who replied had put plastic shields in their outlets. The association did not problem official recommendations about barriers, but ”we encouraged our associates to comply with the CDC recommendations,” he states.

For the reason that of COVID-19, the plexiglass company is now booming. Income of plexiglass, and the trademarked Plexiglas, increased two to a few occasions over the $250 million in income from March to May 2019, according to statistics supplied by the Global Association of Plastics Distribution.

How Properly Do Limitations Function?

Even with the popular suggestions for the plexiglass barriers and their popular use, analysis on how very well they do the job to gradual the spread of COVID-19 is missing, professionals say.

“There are, to my expertise, no peer-reviewed scientific studies evaluating the efficacy of these barriers,” states Michael Fischman, MD, a consulting medical doctor in occupational and environmental drugs and toxicology in Walnut Creek, CA, and clinical professor of drugs at the University of California, San Francisco. Even so, he states, “intuitively, it would make feeling that the barrier would seize large droplets and that might lessen the hazard of transmission.”

He co-wrote a fact sheet for the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medication on applying barriers for workplaces. ”Plexiglass is useful mainly because it is commonly readily available, conveniently worked, clean, clear and conveniently cleanable,” he wrote. Plexiglass is much more sturdy and less pricey than other varieties of barriers, these as tempered glass or polycarbonate, he states.

Fischman states he sees the barriers as ”a acceptable engineering management” that is a health supplement and not a substitute for masks and actual physical distancing.

“It really is just one more layer of safety, and usually we incorporate that layer when the risks go up,” states Denise Bender, an assistant director in the environmental wellbeing and protection division at the University of Washington, Seattle. The university has been introducing plexiglass barriers to foyer spots, reception desks, and in the pupil pharmacy. The barriers never mean persons can skimp on wearing masks and retaining social length, she agrees.

Although barriers may possibly enable defend in opposition to large droplets spread by coughing or sneezing, the coronavirus can also be spread by smaller sized droplets that cling in the air.

1 pro states the plexiglass shields do the job sort of the very same way as encounter shields. “Encounter shields will block the large droplets,” states William Ristenpart, PhD, a professor of chemical engineering at the University of California, Davis. Also, plexiglass partitions ”would be less productive in opposition to aerosol transmission” than droplet transmission. “

Plexiglass may possibly also be headed to cafe tables shortly. A French organization is manufacturing Plex’Eat, protective plexiglass bubbles that cling from the ceiling and enclose the heads of person diners.