The simple metal box that could change the world

 What if we told you a simple metal box could greatly improve global health?

Since 2020, we’ve come to recognize that indoor air is among the greatest sources of infectious disease. COVID-19, influenza, RSV and many other diseases are transmitted through the air – not to mention wildfire smoke, allergens and other harmful pollution. Airborne diseases and air pollution cause economic harm, suffering, disability and early death in our societies.

Research also shows that exposure time to germs is key to their ability to infect us. This means that if we continuously clean or replace indoor air at a high rate, people won’t spread sickness very often. It’s the same reason why illness spreads less outdoors. Fewer infections means fewer contagious people entering shared spaces over time, so the effect compounds and diseases can even start to disappear.

The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers issued a new standard in 2023 for how much clean air is required per person in various venues to lower the risk of airborne disease transmission. For example, a gym requires twice as much clean air per person as a retail store because of how people breathe heavily while exercising.

Ventilation systems often can be easily improved by changing settings and upgrading filters. But the old design standards aren’t enough to prevent the spread of airborne diseases, and ventilation overhauls can be prohibitively expensive. This is where affordable portable air purifiers come in.

There are many air purifiers on the market, but most of them are underpowered, overpriced, plasticky and gimmicky. They typically can’t be repaired if they break. Most importantly, companies trap buyers with proprietary replacement filters for which they charge exorbitant amounts. This is the major profit scheme of many companies. It’s like when replacement ink costs as much as the printer you bought. Some institutions, including school boards, have learned this the hard way.

Air purifiers should be simple. Screens, microchips and controls are just future failure points that provide no added performance benefit. Air cleaners can be programmed and scheduled with $10 smart plugs anyway, so long as they turn on automatically when plugged in.

The “DeisBox” is an open platform, public domain air purifier design ideal for shared indoor spaces. To download the full design plans, parts list, and assembly instructions, visit the pre-print.

What actually matters is how reliable and repairable an air cleaner is, how much air it can clean over time – the Clean Air Delivery Rate, which accounts for filter medium and renders HEPA certification largely irrelevant – how cheap and easy it is to run when factoring in filter replacement, and how quiet it is.

Quietness is underrated but key. Many air purifiers get turned down or off because people are annoyed by the sound. Their capabilities are wasted and more people get sick.

But what if governments, schools and companies could buy or make powerful, nearly silent, metal-framed air cleaners that would last for decades, are easily repairable with inexpensive plentiful parts and use standard furnace filters?

Well, that would be a game changer.

Enter Zack Deis, a health and safety manager from Edmonton, Alta. With the help of a local shop, he designed a metal-framed purifier perfectly suited for public spaces. It uses computer fans since the companies that make them have been competing for decades to develop the quietest and most reliable fans possible. The fans are placed optimally according to prototype testing done by Rob Wissmann and posted on social media. And the design uses universal 20-inch by 20-inch MERV-13 furnace filters.

The result is an inexpensive purifier – informally named the DeisBox or ZackBox – with buy-it-for-life durability, modular repairability, incredible energy efficiency (it uses less than nine watts) and striking performance. It is nearly silent at its single maximum cleaning speed, similar in loudness to running a traditional purifier on the lowest setting. If a computer fan breaks, it can be replaced with another fan. There are no microchips. Each part is off-the-shelf replaceable.

Deis also has already created a larger cuboid unit with a higher rate of air cleaning.

Multiple professional engineers have tested versions of the design and endorsed them. Joseph Fox, the chair of the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers’ Indoor Air Quality Advisory Group, concluded that “even if the current cost doubled, it would be cheaper, quieter and more powerful than the industrial grade air cleaners on the market.”

The design’s performance testing, technical design files, parts list and assembly instructions have been published online at the engineering pre-print server ENGRXIV for any institution or person to use. Everything necessary to manufacture and assemble these units is publicly available. Assembly is so simple that it can be completed by elementary school children, something that has already been done locally. One company, named Nukit, is selling a revision of the design with the same performance, the “Tempest,” to which Fox’s statement refers.

The undeniable superiority of Deis-style air cleaners means that governments, investors and non-profits should be directing funds to their construction and deployment. The concept can be expanded to a platform of different-sized but similarly built designs, and Deis has already created a larger cuboid unit with a higher rate of air cleaning. Institutions who invest in these units set themselves up for generations of better occupant health and all the benefits that follow, at much lower cost than other solutions. These products can reliably supply clean air to the population almost indefinitely, if we just deploy them.

So yes, a simple metal box can improve global health.