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St. Paul Company Helps Businesses Reopen By Installing Air Systems To Trap And Kill Coronavirus

ST. PAUL, MINN. (WCCO) -- Inside the Defining You Pilates and Fitness Center, owner and instructor Suzy Levi is toning bodies and restoring confidence.

"Movement is essential to health. But with all that's going on people are reluctant to come back to do what really need to be feeling good," Levi said.

Studies have shown that the coronavirus suspends on droplets, spreading on tiny particles carried in the surrounding airflow. That's why Levi installed a new system inside her center that more effectively purifies her indoor airflow.

"We thought the cleaner we can make the air the more success we will have as a business," Levi said. "As well as making our clients feel much safer, they'll feel less sick and feel good."

She turned to local St. Paul HVAC contractor, Ducts and Cleats. The family owned business worked with the Mayo Clinic in the earlies days of the coronavirus pandemic to help sanitize airflow in hospital isolation rooms.

Ducts and Cleats did that by modifying air handling systems with a three-prong approach. Its industrial grade Iso-Aire Clean Air Technology system is designed to both filter and attack the tiniest viral particles.

"This Iso-Aire filtration system was born out of working with the Mayo Clinic," Kevin Albers, sales and marketing manager, said.

Iso-Aire Filtration System - Covid-19 Filter
(credit: CBS)

Albers went on to explain how the unit moves huge volumes of air inside buildings, often changing the air volume over every ten minutes. Inside a furnace sized metal cabinet is a one-foot-wide, hospital grade HEPA air filter that traps the tiniest of particles, of .12 microns in diameter.

Those particles are then sterilized as they pass through the unit's ultraviolet light. The third element is a bipolar ionization system which fills the air volume with ions that render the virus proteins harmless.

According to the company's data, the unit removes 99.97 to 99.99% of the harmful virus particles.

"We feel we have the highest level of protection to keep everyone safe, to reopen places safely and get people back to normality," Albers said.

Helping to reopen schools, factories and offices. The same system is now purifying the air inside Joseph's Grill in St. Paul, where there too, customers are also returning.

"This made us really comfortable to open and have as another safeguard to make people feel safe," Levi said.

Because as Levi knows, confidence is the key to good health.

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