Controlling airborne transmitted disease remains a challenge to clinicians, healthcare administrators, and engineers. Engineering measures are critical to any infection control program but can require extensive installation procedures, may be expensive to maintain, and may not always demonstrate clinical or financial benefit. We determined the financial and carbon benefits of an engineering solution to combat air pollutants and to control airborne transmitted disease. We determined the costs of healthcare associated infections (HAIs), and the costs of installation, maintenance, energy demands, and carbon impacts of an ACTIVE Particle ControlTM (APC) air-purification system. In a 20 month study with over 65,000 patient days the significant reductions in HAIs resulted in significant financial, energy, maintenance, and carbon savings from this engineering solution. Positive clinical and financial outcomes are possible with novel air-purification solutions such as APC.
Strontium lanthanum aluminate (SrLaAlO4) belongs to a wide family of compounds with the general formula ABCO4 (where A denotes an alkaline earth cation: B denotes Y. Sc or a trivalent rare earth element and C denotes Al, Ga or a transition metal ion). This material crystallises in the perovskite phase, with tetragonal K2NiF4 structure having space group 14/mmm. The structure is composed of CO6 layers in the ab plane. The C cations are surrounded by six oxygens and sit in slightly distorted octahedral sites. Between these layers, the A cations and trivalent B cations are randomly distributed in nine co-ordinated sites of C4v symmetry. The random distribution of Sr2+ and La3+ ions leads to a structural disorder that causes inhomogeneous broadening of the spectral lines of rare-earth ions doped into these crystals.
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