Air Date: 4-26-24 |Episode 728|
This week we welcomed Brad Prezant and Russ Crutcher to talk about assessing wildfire and other indoor particles. There is a lot of attention on fire restoration and how to determine what is contaminated vs what is clean. Today, we will LEARN MORE on IAQ Radio+.
Brad Prezant, MBA, MSPH, CIH, COH, CAQP is an evidence-based public health scientist with a background in epidemiology, occupational health & hygiene, and ergonomics. He provides expert witness support for litigation involving indoor air quality including mould, wildfire, and other issues impacting the built environment. Until the company was sold in 2007, he operated Prezant Associates, Inc. in Seattle, providing consulting, training, and laboratory services for 20+ years. He is currently Principal Consultant at PREZANT Environmental in Melbourne, Australia. After migrating to New Zealand in 2008, Mr. Prezant spent 3 years at Massey University researching a variety of occupational health issues including solvent exposure to auto body painters, fumigant and VOC exposures from shipping containers, and dust exposures to woodworkers. He previously was Chief Editor of AIHA’s first edition of Recognition, Evaluation, and Control of Indoor Mold, an author of several other standard of care documents, and is the Past Vice President for Practice of ISIAQ (International Society of Indoor Air Quality & Climate). He is involved in a wide variety of indoor air quality and occupational health issues, from indoor moisture and mould to ventilation, traditional IH exposure assessment, and infection transmission indoors. He recently managed the hotel quarantine program in Victoria, Australia.
Russ Crutcher is the Owner and Principal Analyst for Microlab Northwest since 1978. Mr. Crutcher Graduated from the University of Washington in Physical Anthropology with Minors in Chemistry, Physics, and Mathematics. He also went to graduate school in Civil Engineering. He taught the Optical Properties of Materials for the Engineering College of the University of Washington for 8 years and has taught classes in environmental microscopy since 1976. In addition to his lab experience Russ was a Visiting Scholar to Imperial College in London, 1985 and 1987, a crime scene investigator for 3 years, a NASA Principal Investigator for 3 years identifying contaminants and their sources on the surfaces of satellites returned from orbit and Lead Engineer for Boeing’s Analytical Engineering Group for 29 years. He also teaches a class on Identification of Combustion Particles for McCrone Research Institute and has published over 100 papers on the Analysis of Environmental Particles using light microscopy.