University of Michigan issued the following announcement on Dec. 8.
The close proximities and confined spaces of the dental office environment in a pandemic pose a host of potential health risks, and it may be even more problematic in dental schools and other large dental offices with similar cubicle set-ups.
It’s a situation University of Michigan engineers have sought to make safer by analyzing the transport of aerosols within the clinics at U-M School of Dentistry. In its role educating dental students, the school has clinics where up to 40 patients can be treated at the same time.
Sensing equipment often used to analyze auto emissions helped the engineering researchers understand areas of concern that included: the 5-foot-high walls that separate each dental cubicle space and the aerosol droplets that are created during procedures that use water jets, such as high speed drilling and ultrasonic cleaning.
“Historic research has looked at very traditional dental settings, like singular practices, singular closable rooms, but the dental school is not like that,” said Romesh Nalliah, associate dean for patient services at the U-M School of Dentistry. “We have low barriers between cubicles so that instructors can peek over the top to speak to students.”
Nalliah reached out to U-M’s College of Engineering for help, and Margaret Wooldridge and Andre Boehman, both professors of mechanical engineering, answered the call.
Utilizing high-speed imaging, particle spectrometers, scanning mobility particle sizing systems, and optical particle counters, the two engineers were able to see how the droplets were being created, how many were created, and what happened to them during drilling procedures on mannequins.
Original source can be found here.
Source: University of Michigan
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