Business & Tech

A Fairfield Co.'s Science Behind Cleaning Air

Fairfield Business Owner Says Technology Employed by AtmosAir Dates Back to Albert Einstein's Sister

Ever wonder what's in the air you breathe?

Probably not, since Fairfield isn't known for smog and particles in air are too small to detect with the naked eye.

But a Fairfield company knows all about particles and spores in air, even in areas where air quality isn't a hot topic, and the effects air quality can have on people.

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"When you take the dust and the particles and the spores out of air, people who have allergies feel much better," said Steve Levine, CEO and president of AtmosAir Solutions on Meadow Street in Fairfield, in a recent interview. "Removing those particles from the air makes breathing much easier."

But cleaner air benefits more than people with allergies. It also wards off the spread of germs, eliminates odors, increases productivity and conserves energy, according to Levine.

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AtmosAir counts among its clients schools, office buildings, hospitals, senior living facilities, military bases and National Football League teams, Levine said. "We're helping a lot of teams. Their concern is bacteria and viruses and germs. When you can clean up the air, it provides a much cleaner environment," he said.

The first NFL team to sign up as a client of AtmosAir was the Dallas Cowboys, owners of which Levine was introduced to through Leigh Steinberg, a sports agent Levine met at a Super Bowl party about five years ago. Steinberg was involved in an initiative to "green" the NFL, and after talking with Levine, set up a meeting between Levine and Steve Jones, son of Jerry Jones, the Cowboys' owner, Levine said.

After testing out an air-cleaning unit at the home of the Cowboys' head sports trainer, Jim Mauer, units were installed in the Cowboys' locker room, training room, weight room, meeting rooms, and, eventually, the entire facility, Levine said.

The Kansas City Chiefs and Jacksonville Jaguars followed, and air-cleaning units also were installed for Major League Baseball teams such as the Florida Marlins and Chicago Cubs, Levine said. "The Portland Trailblazers [a National Basketball Association team] will probably be our next customer," he said, adding that AtmosAir also is conducting tests on air quality for the Arizona Cardinals and St. Louis Rams, two NFL teams, and in part of the Staples Center in Los Angeles.

AtmosAir's air-cleaning units range from those that clean 500 square feet of air to those that clean 10,000 square feet. AtmosAir, Levine said, can clean air in structures ranging from a house to an office building to an arena. "It's all multiples of the amount of square footage," he said. Units are installed on the "supply side" of heating and air conditioning systems, which Levine said catch more particles than units installed on the return side.

"When you see black in a duct system, black is viable mold spores. When you put our system into the duct, it turns viable spores into ashen gray, giving evidence the spores are dead," Levine said. "It breaks down the DNA, the outer shell of the mold spore so it can't reproduce, so a mold spore can't live in an ionized environment."

The technology AtmosAir uses to clean air goes back to Albert Einstein's sister, who suffered from tuberculosis and was told the best place for her to get better was in the mountains where the air is fresher and cleaner. Levine said Einstein wanted to know why air was so much cleaner in the mountains and theorized that air had a "natural conductivity, and that conductivity was ionization."

"Einstein proved that, in the mountains, there was a high degree of conductivity and ionization, and the ions, positive and negative, if you measured them, would be very high. But as you got closer to sea level, those ions were eaten up by pollution and emissions," Levine said, adding that fewer ions were left to attach themselves to pollution and contaminants.

"All we're trying to do is add back the ions to the space, and those ions are what attacks the contaminants. When negative and positive ions get put into air, they attach themselves to contaminants," Levine said. The microscopic particles become bigger and heavier and drop out of the breathing space to the floor, Levine said.

Ions are replicated by tubes that last about 8,800 hours and that are installed in duct work or in air handlers on roofs. Tubes need to be changed about once a year, Levine said.

AtmosAir's units also work well in eliminating odors because ions attach themselves to volatile organic compounds and break them down to carbon dioxide and water vapor, Levine said.

Air-cleaning systems can also reduce energy costs because the amount of outside air that has to be brought into a facility can be reduced, Levine said. He said the American Society of Heating and Air Conditioning Engineers allows less outside air into a facility if the facility, such as a school or office, has an air-cleaning strategy accredited by ASHACE, which AtmosAir is, Levine said.

AtmosAir's units also pay for themselves through increased productivity, according to Levine. "If you have a cleaner environment in a school or office building, productivity is bound to go up and absenteeism is bound to go down," he said. "If you bring down the cost of absenteeism, that's going to bring down the cost of business."

Fifty percent of AtmosAir's 5,000 clients are office buildings and schools, about 20 percent are sports facilities, another 20 percent are military bases, and the remainder are homes, Levine said. Most clients are in the eastern United States though AtmosAir is branching out to the West, Levine said, adding that growth this year was 16 percent above last year.

In addition to NFL and MLB teams, AtmosAir's clients include the University of Southern California, where units are installed in athletic locker rooms, the daycare and childcare center at UBS North America's headquarters in Stamford, Fairfield University, the University of Bridgeport, public schools in Darien, Westport and Atlanta, U.S. Army bases, Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, Carnegie Hall in New York City, Emerald Island Casino in Las Vegas, Hospital for Special Surgery in New York and Norwalk Hospital, according to a list of AtmosAir's clients provided by Levine. "We have just started to do our first school in California...We think schools are a major market for us," he said.

Levine said AtmosAir representatives met with Norwegian Cruise Lines this winter in Miami and should soon have air-cleaning units installed on its first cruise ship.

AtmosAir now has 133 authorized dealers around the country, including Gault, Edgerton and Encon, Levine said. If AtmosAir doesn't have a dealer in an area where a new client is located, the Fairfield company will create a dealer while its representatives are there, Levine said.

Levine said he was in the security alarm business for 20 years and built and sold a successful company in order to catch the wave of green technology about five years ago. "I felt the air quality business, in this green environment that we're living in, would be a great business opportunity," he said.

Levine said his company bought the bi-polar ionization technology behind AtmosAir from a European company in 2004 and 2006 and brought it to the United States. "We branded the technology as AtmosAir," he said.

AtmosAir, which has always been in Fairfield and which employs 13 people, wants in the future to branch out to planes, trains and cars, Levine said. "It's all in the tube. We think we can make one that fits in a car," he said. "Wherever somebody breathes, we can have an effect and there's 60 million people that have allergies and asthma, so typically that's one out of five we can affect on a daily basis."


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