Sacramento City schools halt $6 million air cleaner order as investigation continues

The Sacramento City Unified School District is demanding Johnson Controls stop sending the remaining air cleaners that were part of its $6 million contract, as school officials continue to investigate whether product claims made by the global building equipment company were true.

The original contract with Johnson Controls included 6,000 V-PAC SC air cleaners and replacement parts, and was the district’s largest single purchase made with CARES Act funding last year as school officials scrambled to prepare for reopenings.

A Sacramento Bee story in January highlighted concerns from indoor air quality experts about the controversial air cleaners manufactured by Ultraviolet Devices, Inc. Experts said the air purifiers were overpriced, inefficient and included unnecessary and unproven technology.

The district has yet to pay about $2.5 million and receive about 1,000 air purifiers and replacement parts.

In a letter to Johnson Controls last week, district counsel Raoul Bozio said the district will not accept additional deliveries of the air cleaners “until the District has satisfied its concerns ... including but not limited to the claim by JCI that the units’ UV-C technology is effective in neutralizing the Covid-19 virus as well as its effectiveness in addressing a 1000 cubic-foot space.”

“The District has conducted some tests on the units already and is continuing with further analysis based on the claims of effectiveness by JCI before accepting additional units,” Bozio wrote May 12 in a letter addressed to Zac Dillow, who is a HVAC system sales engineer at Johnson Controls, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Based on previous testing data conducted by the manufacturers and obtained by The Bee, the air cleaners purchased by the district would be sufficient for a room roughly 130 square feet, according to industry standards and an assessment by indoor air quality expert Bud Offermann. That means the district would need to use at least eight devices per 1,000 square foot classroom to effectively clean the air.

After the Bee story and following outcry from the Sacramento City Teachers Association, the air cleaners were pulled from classrooms and put into storage, with the district promising to conduct its own tests on how effective the devices were and whether they potentially released harmful chemicals.

The district hired Forensic Analytical Consulting Services earlier this year to perform tests on the air cleaners at several classrooms, paying the industrial hygiene consulting firm $24,000.

An April 20 report from Forensic Analytical Consulting Services stated that the air cleaners “generally reduced particulate levels in the sampled locations” and were unlikely to contribute to “elevated volatile organic compounds (VOC), formaldehyde or ozone concentrations.”

The report, however, did not specify how effective the air purifiers were at cleaning the air in a 1,000-square-foot classroom, or how effective they are at minimizing the spread of the coronavirus.

The district has been in communication with Johnson Controls, meeting with representatives as recently as May 6 to discuss its concerns over the controversial air cleaners. At this time, it’s unclear whether the district will pursuit legal action against Johnson Controls.

In its letter, Bozio said the district “invites JCI to explore any creative options for resolving the District’s concerns and in consideration of the longstanding business relationship between the District and JCI.”

In a statement, Johnson Controls spokeswoman Kellie Harris said that the air cleaner “meets the requirements (the district) outlined for us in November 2020 as well as our contractual obligations.”

“That said, we value SCUSD as a customer and partner, and have offered to pause the scheduled shipments in order to review the District’s independent test findings and discuss next steps,” Harris said in a statement.

Harris added that independent tests have shown that the air cleaners “are safe for use on school district sites, including those with children,” and that “if people have concerns, we want to help the District assuage those concerns where we can.”

Sacramento City Unified School District isn’t the only district embroiled in controversy stemming from new air cleaning devices during the pandemic. In the rush to assuage concerns about bringing students and staff back into the classroom, more than 2,000 schools across the country have installed air purifiers with dubious technology, Kaiser Health News reported this month.

So far, thousands of students have already returned to Sac City schools under a hybrid model blending in-person and distance learning each week, and Gov. Gavin Newsom has urged school districts to prepare for a full return to the classroom this fall.

This story was originally published May 20, 2021 at 5:00 AM.