COVID-19 UNM installs sanitizing system in training facility

ALBUQUERQUE — A new company has picked the University of New Mexico’s athletic department to test out a disinfectant delivery system that claims to kill 99 percent of germs — and, it says, the novel coronavirus.

A startup by the name of Clean Spray Technologies has donated one of its first units to UNM’s athletic training offices inside the Tow Diehm Facility at the school’s football stadium. Installation took place over the weekend and test runs were conducted Sunday and Monday.

It comes at no cost to UNM since this is the company’s first venture into a public market. Typically it would come with a price tag ranging between $10,000 and more than six figures. When fully operational, said company head Roger McElwrath, it will completely sanitize any surface in the room it serves.

“We know we’re not going to be the end-all, be-all solution to perfectly sanitize everything, but we are going to provide a form of mitigation that will enable us to go into public spaces and use those again the way we were used to doing it that gets back to some semblance of normal life,” McElwrath said.

Clean Spray Technologies uses a liquid disinfectant that runs $30 to $35 per gallon, McElwrath said. He said it is all natural and environmentally safe, having been lab-tested.

Clean Spray chief science officer, Dr. Richard Cooper, said it has gained Environmental Protection Agency approval.

“It doesn’t harm the skin, doesn’t harm your eyes, isn’t hard to breathe,” McElwrath said. “We definitely don’t recommend standing in the middle of it, but it is environmentally friendly.”

Targeted rooms are fitted with nozzles in the ceiling grid, which deliver a fog that drifts down onto every surface in the room. McElwrath said it takes about 20 minutes for the disinfectant to completely dry, leaving behind a sanitized surface that leaves behind no trace of the chemicals used to clean the room.

He would not disclose what types of chemical disinfectants were used, but Clean Spray Chief Executive Tony Woods said the delivery method involves a 50-gallon drum attached to a pump system operated remotely by a timed release. He said it’s optimal that it be used at least twice a day, presumably when the rooms are not in use early in the morning or late at night.

UNM athletics has identified 15 rooms where it wants the system. The first locker room will likely be the football team’s inside Dreamstyle Stadium with the baseball clubhouse across the street at Santa Ana Star Field not far behind.

Lobos baseball coach Ray Birmingham’s relationship with Woods predates Clean Spray’s existence, but when Woods approached him in June about this new venture, Birmingham jumped at the chance.

“I want our football team on the field if we can figure it out,” Birmingham said.

The baseball coach took the idea to UNM’s head trainer, Bob Waller, who gave it the thumbs-up. It took about four to six hours to install the system and by Monday morning it has cleared its first test.

“MRSA is becoming a big deal in all training rooms across the country,” Birmingham said. “So just with MRSA alone we needed to do it.”

The goal, McElwrath said, is to expand Clean Spray’s system into public transportation and classrooms. If it does find its way into classrooms, Woods sees it going into use every time a room empties between classes.

The local media was originally invited to view the system in action, but UNM athletics officials nixed the idea just a few hours before the planned demonstration. Instead, Birmingham had the entire Clean Spray contingent meet with the media at a downtown hotel a few miles away from campus.

When asked about the myriad questions surrounding the behavior of the coronavirus and how his company was geared to handling it, Cooper paused before answering.

“That’s the million-dollar question,” he said. “I’d have Dr. [Anthony] Fauci’s job if I could really answer that. There is still so much that we don’t know about the virus. The approach right now that we’re trying to take is using a sound scientific approach, eliminate what we can.”