SafeTraces, Inc.

Pleasanton,  CA 
United States
http://www.safetraces.com
  • Booth: 946


veriDART® Aerosol Tracer Technology. Visit Us at Booth 946!

SafeTraces delivers veriDART®, the market leading solution for verifying safe indoor airflow. Like never before, facility managers, employers, and indoor air quality professionals are held to the highest standards of safety and rapidly evolving health regulation. veriDART is the first solution of its kind to directly test how aerosols migrate, settle, and dilute in the air of occupied indoor spaces, by leveraging aerosol tracers that safely mimic pathogen mobility and exposure. With veriDART, customers throughout the built environment are able to target capital expenditures to the highest value opportunities, reopen with confidence, and stay in control of air safety.


SafeTraces is partnering with EHS, IAQ, and Engineering leaders to deliver veriDART nationally, including: UL, Tetra Tech, Citadel EHS, RHP Risk Management, and Universal Engineering Sciences.

Visit us at Booth #946 to learn about the value of veriDART® by SafeTraces and the services we offer to address indoor air quality and airborne exposure concerns.

Brands: veriDART® by SafeTraces


 Press Releases

  • SafeTraces Launches HVAC Safety Verification Service With EHS, IAQ and Engineering Leaders

    UL, Tetra Tech, RHP Risk Management, Citadel EHS, and Universal Engineering Sciences will be flagship partners in delivering the first safety verification service of HVAC system performance focused on airborne pathogens.

    Date: July 15, 2021

    PLEASANTON, Calif., July 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — SafeTraces, Inc., a market leader in DNA-based safety technology solutions, today launched its HVAC Safety Verification Service for commercial real estate, education, healthcare, and other built environments. This service will be available immediately for building owners and operators via flagship partners UL, Tetra Tech, RHP Risk Management, Citadel EHS, Universal Engineering Sciences, and a national network of certified professionals. Reflecting the need to test and verify HVAC safety on a recurring basis in order to effectively combat respiratory infection from SARS-CoV-2 and other airborne diseases, this service will build on SafeTraces’ groundbreaking veriDART™ solution, currently being employed by major corporate, commercial real estate, and government clients across the United States.

    Respiratory infections represent one of the most significant public health risks in the world. COVID-19 has been responsible for nearly 4 million deaths, nearly 200 million cases, and an estimated $1 trillion in monthly economic loss globally. Beyond COVID-19, the annual direct and indirect cost of influenza and other respiratory infections has been estimated at over $50 billion just in the United States alone. Scientific evidence indicates that ventilation, filtration, and disinfection are critical mitigation strategies. However, most public buildings lack the ability to test and verify performance of their HVAC and mechanical systems for airborne pathogens due to limitations in existing diagnostic assessment tools.

    Offered quarterly, semi-annually, or annually, SafeTraces’ HVAC Safety Verification Service leverages the company’s veriDART solution. Developed with support from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and leading technical experts, veriDART employs patented DNA-tagged bioaerosol tracers that safely simulate respiratory emission of airborne pathogens in real-world spaces. Resulting data helps identify potential infection hotspots, verify ventilation and filtration system performance for mitigating occupational exposures to airborne pathogens, and inform critical safety, engineering, and financial decisions with independent, science-based, performance data.

    SafeTraces’ HVAC Safety Verification Service addresses a number of urgent needs for building owners and operators: guiding major capital investments and operating expenditures, satisfying increasing federal and state OSHA regulatory compliance requirements, enhancing existing IAQ and IEQ programs, gaining credits for leading building certification and verification programs, reducing insurance premiums and legal liability, and incorporating findings into employee and tenant communications to strengthen public confidence in workplace safety.

    “The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically exposed a problem in plain sight: how unprepared and vulnerable many public buildings are to transmission of airborne pathogens due to inadequate ventilation, filtration, and other critical engineering controls,” said Erik Malmstrom, CEO of SafeTraces. “SafeTraces is thrilled to partner with UL, Tetra Tech, RHP Risk Management, Citadel EHS, Universal Engineering Sciences, and a national network of certified professionals in order to provide a powerful, practical, and cost-effective service to regularly test and verify the health and safety of real-world spaces in a way that has never been possible before and that will ultimately save lives and money.”

    “Tetra Tech is pleased to be a strategic partner with SafeTraces,” said Tetra Tech CEO Dan Batrack. “We look forward to providing our clients with this advanced testing technology that supports our High Performance Buildings Group’s mission of healthy and sustainable projects.”

    “The use of veriDART’s DNA-tracer technology allows RHP Risk Management’s Industrial Hygienists to test and validate the efficacy of building ventilation systems at controlling indoor aerosol mobility,” said Jacob Persky, Principal of RHP Risk Management. “With this technology RHP provides clients with actionable data to quantify the risk reduction provided by improved engineering controls like filter upgrades or increased amounts of outside air. The technology also helps to identify ‘hot spots’ and areas of concern where system improvements are needed. The technology behind veriDART™ puts RHP’s ventilation assessment services at the forefront of the IH profession and gives our clients peace of mind when managing buildings and worksites in a post-COVID world.”

    “Citadel EHS is proud to partner with SafeTraces to deliver their HVAC Safety Verification Services, leveraging the groundbreaking veriDART™ solution, the market leading solution for verifying safe indoor airflow,” said Loren Witkin, CEO of Citadel EHS. “For the past nearly 30 years, Citadel EHS has provided science-based, cost-effective solutions to our clients to ensure the health, safety, and well-being of their employees, vendors, guests, and visitors. Our strategic partnership with SafeTraces provides Citadel and our clients with a unique and truly cutting-edge diagnostic tool to make informed decisions.  As we like to say, SafeTraces makes the invisible, visible. ”

    “COVID-19 has dramatically changed the way we look at indoor air quality, and our clients are looking for ways to best assess their HVAC systems for both performance efficacy and optimization in removing infectious agents,” said Michelle McIntyre, Corporate Director of Occupational Health & Safety at Universal Engineering Sciences. “We are excited to include veriDART™ as part of our comprehensive indoor air quality service offerings to help our clients maintain a healthy and safe workplace for their employees.”

    About SafeTraces, Inc.
    SafeTraces is committed to ensuring the highest safety standards for the air we breathe, the food we eat, and the medicines we take by harnessing the power of DNA. We provide market-leading safety technology solutions for indoor air quality and safety, sanitation verification, and food and pharmaceutical traceability. Learn more at www.safetraces.com and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

    This post originally appeared on PR Newswire. Read it here.

  • Is There COVID in the Air at Your Office or Workplace?

    SafeTraces, headquartered in Pleasanton, CA, has now been hired by, and is measuring the “air change” in office buildings, universities, and public spaces.

    By Joel Grover and Josh Davis

    Date: August 5, 2021

    When one of California’s biggest owners of office space–The Irvine Company–wanted to make sure the air in its buildings was free of viruses, it hired a Bay Area company that showed up with spray bottles and skilled technicians.

    The company, called SafeTraces, was testing the air in the offices to measure something called “air change”—the number of times per hour that the air in a room is totally changed through ventilation and filtration.

    As millions of people are returning to their offices and workplaces for the first time since the pandemic began, public health doctors are realizing that sufficient “air change” is critical to preventing further spread of COVID-19 and other respiratory viruses.

    It’s now well documented the droplets from a cough or sneeze can spread viruses “which can stay in the air for 30 minutes to hours… and travel well beyond six feet” in a room, said Professor Joseph Allen, head of the Healthy Buildings Program at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, in an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

    “One of the biggest surprises of the entire pandemic is that there’s been a failure to recognize the reality of airborne transmission,” Professor Allen told the I-Team.

    SafeTraces, headquartered in Pleasanton, CA, has now been hired by, and is measuring the “air change” in office buildings, universities, and public spaces such as Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) Airport.

    “Most employees won’t really know if the air quality is good in their buildings,” said SafeTraces CEO Erik Malmstrom.

    The I-Team traveled to SafeTraces headquarters to see how the company tests the air in an office or workplace, using a spray that looks like air freshener. It’s really a DNA-laced aerosol, called veriDART.

    “It’s intended to simulate a cough or sneeze,” SafeTraces’ Malmstrom told the I-Team.

    The DNA solution is sprayed in the air numerous times, then a machine captures air samples, which are then analyzed in a lab to see how many virus-like particles remained in the air. The results reveal the “air change” in a room.

    If the air in a room isn’t changed often enough, people could inhale airborne viruses and get sick.

    “With SARS-CoV-2 [the virus that causes COVID], the majority of outbreaks involving 3 or more people have been linked… to airborne transmission,” wrote Harvard’s Professor Allen.

    The I-Team discovered that no government agency has yet set clear standards for air changes in a room, though Cal/OSHA told NBC4 “Cal/OSHA’s emergency temporary standards require employers to take steps to improve indoor airflow and filtration whenever possible. Cal/OSHA enforces these requirements by investigating complaints from workers, referrals from non-workers and notifications of work-related serious injuries, illnesses and fatalities.”

    But Harvard’s School of Public Health has determined there should be at least four complete changes of the air in a room every hour, “ideally” six changes.

    “That means you’re changing out air six times per hour or every ten minutes, through the combination of ventilation and filtration,” said SafeTraces’ CEO Malmstrom.

    In high risk settings like hospital operating rooms, the air is changed 12 times an hour, according to a U.S. Department of Defense study. On commercial airplanes, the air is changed through advanced HEPA filtration systems up to 36 times an hour. But in most indoor settings, the air change falls below the Harvard standard for healthy air.

    “For example, in your home, typically you get half an air change per hour. In a school, we get less than 3 air changes per hour,” said Harvard’s Professor Allen.

    When SafeTraces tested the air in its own conference room, similar to those in thousands of office buildings, the air was being changed only three times an hour, not the recommended six.

    “We don’t think that’s enough,” said the company’s CEO.

    But improving the air change in an office or home isn’t necessarily expensive or complicated.

    “It’s really quite simple,” said Harvard’s Professor Allen. “You can sometimes accomplish it by opening up the windows a bit, or purchasing a portable air cleaners with a HEPA filter.”

    When SafeTraces put a movable HEPA filter in its conference room, the air went from being changed three times an hour to ten times an hour.

    You can buy a HEPA filter starting at less than $100 online or at hardware stores.

    Experts like Professor Allen tell the I-Team, in order to make sure the unit is powerful enough for your space, you should look at the product description to find something called the Clean Air Delivery Rate, or CADR.

    “My rule of thumb is that you want a CADR of 350 for every 500 square feet. That will give you five air changes per hour, or more,” said Allen.

    And experts suggest that as employees return to their offices for the first time since the pandemic began, they ask their bosses a few questions about “air change” and ventilation.

    “They should ask, ‘What have you done to make the space safer? Where is the ventilation and filtration system today?’ People should be transparent at this point. It’s people’s health and safety and lives that are at stake,” SafeTraces CEO Malmstrom told NBC4.

    This post originally appeared on NBC Los Angeles. Watch it here.


 Products

  • veriDART® by SafeTraces
    veriDART is the first and only liquid aerosol-based solution for verifying engineering controls and HVAC performance for airborne pathogens to keep people safe in any indoor environment....

  • veriDART’s proprietary airborne tracers safely mimic the chemical composition, mobility, and effect of ventilation and filtration for aerosol contaminants. The technology detects how air travels within a building by proactively identifying potential infection hotspots and verifying ventilation and filtration controls. By delivering actionable decision-making analytics, veriDART informs facility and engineering decisions to implement best practices and maintain compliance. Learn more at www.safetraces.com.

    Product Benefits:

    • Mitigate occupational health and safety risk
    • Target remediation capex/opex to highest value opportunities
    • Validate and verify efficacy of remediations undertaken
    • Instill occupant/employee trust and confidence in building safety
    • Implement best practices and maintain compliance for new indoor air quality regulations

    Product Applications:

    • Survey Test: Measure and verify aerosol mobility and concentration through occupied indoor spaces in order to identify hotspots and target high-value remediations.
    • Dilution Ventilation Test: Measure and verify pathogen aerosol reduction rate over time under different scenarios in order to verify HVAC performance and transmission risk in occupied rooms.
    • Recirculation Test: Measure in-room aerosols and their ability to reach HVAC filtration to verify systems effectiveness and reduce transmission risk.