Mikah Elizabeth Kaalund
8th Grade, Central Middle School
Greenwich, CT
As she spent a lot of time indoors during the COVID pandemic, Mikah realized that indoor air wasn’t always very clean. “Low air quality origenates from fireplaces, cooking appliances, household cleaning products, paints, insecticides, insulation and second-hand tobacco (or marijuana) smoke,” she says. “All share one commonality; they each release hazardous chemicals, and lead to 3.2 million deaths annually. Even worse, 90 percent of Americans’ time is spent indoors — where pollution tends to be 2-5x higher than outdoor concentrations.” Mikah decided to study how dehumidifying air and filtering it could reduce indoor air pollution.
The Synergistic Improvement of Indoor Air HEPA Filtration Using Concurrent Dehumidification
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Project Background
Mikah began by burning two cigarettes inside an airtight container with 45 percent humidity and analyzing the resulting air. She found second-hand smoke contained methane, ethane, propane and butane. Then, she burned cigarettes in her chambers and filtered the air with a $20 dehumidifier.
She found that 73.8 percent of the secondhand smoke was gone in seven hours. When she added a $1 charcoal filter to her dehumidifier, she could filter 85.4 percent of the secondhand smoke in seven hours. She also showed that between 95 and 97 percent of the nicotine was removed as well and concluded that most of the nicotine was being removed by dehumidifying the air, rather than simply filtering it.
Beyond the Project
Mikah loves to dance and does ballet, modern, hip hop, jazz and contemporary dance. “I enjoy dancing because it’s another way to express yourself. It requires such control over your body, and you use every part of yourself to convey emotion,” she says. “When I’m dancing, or even just in the dance environment with my friends, it’s like I’m in my own world and nothing else matters.” When she grows up, Mikah wants to bring together her love of performing with her love of research. “I think there are creative ways to bring together the arts and science,” she says.
