SafeTraces, Inc. provides market-leading DNA-based safety technology solutions for indoor air quality and safety, sanitation verification, and food and pharmaceutical traceability. Earlier this year, the company launched a new HVAC Safety Verification Service for commercial real estate, education, healthcare, and other built environments. This service is available for building owners and operators via flagship partners UL, Tetra Tech, RHP Risk Management, Citadel EHS, Universal Engineering Sciences, and a national network of certified professionals. 

The new service builds on SafeTraces' groundbreaking veriDART solution, currently being employed by major corporate, commercial real estate, and government clients across the United States, and reflects the need to test and verify heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) safety on a recurring basis in order to effectively combat respiratory infection from SARS-CoV-2 and other airborne diseases. Respiratory infections represent one of the most significant public health risks in the world. Beyond Covid-19, the annual direct and indirect cost of influenza and other respiratory infections has been estimated at over $50 billion just in the United States alone. Scientific evidence indicates that ventilation, filtration, and disinfection are critical mitigation strategies but most public buildings lack the ability to test and verify performance of their HVAC and mechanical systems for airborne pathogens due to limitations in existing diagnostic assessment tools. 

Offered quarterly, semi-annually, or annually, SafeTraces' HVAC Safety Verification Service leverages the company's veriDART solution. Developed with support from the National Institutes of Health and leading technical experts, veriDART employs patented DNA-tagged bioaerosol tracers that safely simulate respiratory emission of airborne pathogens in real-world spaces. Resulting data helps identify potential infection hotspots, verify ventilation and filtration system performance for mitigating occupational exposures to airborne pathogens, and inform critical safety, engineering, and financial decisions with independent, science-based, performance data.

SafeTraces' HVAC Safety Verification Service addresses a number of urgent needs for building owners and operators: guiding major capital investments and operating expenditures, satisfying increasing federal and state OSHA regulatory compliance requirements, enhancing existing indoor air quality and indoor environmental quality  programs, gaining credits for leading building certification and verification programs, reducing insurance premiums and legal liability, and incorporating findings into employee and tenant communications to strengthen public confidence in workplace safety.

"The Covid-19 pandemic has dramatically exposed a problem in plain sight: how unprepared and vulnerable many public buildings are to transmission of airborne pathogens due to inadequate ventilation, filtration, and other critical engineering controls," according to Erik Malmstrom, CEO of SafeTraces, which has its headquarters at Hacienda. "SafeTraces is thrilled to partner with UL, Tetra Tech, RHP Risk Management, Citadel EHS, Universal Engineering Sciences, and a national network of certified professionals in order to provide a powerful, practical, and cost-effective service to regularly test and verify the health and safety of real-world spaces in a way that has never been possible before and that will ultimately save lives and money."

"Tetra Tech is pleased to be a strategic partner with SafeTraces," said Tetra Tech CEO Dan Batrack. "We look forward to providing our clients with this advanced testing technology that supports our High Performance Buildings Group's mission of healthy and sustainable projects."

For more information about SafeTraces, Inc., please visit www.safetraces.com.