Ken Banks & Johns Hopkins Team Up On Life-Saving Construction Project
Maryland Chamber Board member Ken Banks, President of Banks Contracting Company teamed up with investigators at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health to design a system that will dramatically reduce indoor air pollution created from cooking inside thatched and adobe-style homes.
More than 3 billion people around the world live in homes that lack adequate ventilation, causing toxic smoke to accumulate inside. As a result, lung disease-related disabilities and deaths are dramatically higher among these populations. Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health recruited Banks to serve on the research team to find a practical, construction-based solution to this global public health problem
In February, Banks made his second site visit to the Puno region of Peru to provide constructional engineering expertise to the research team. He was tasked with refining the system design and determining the feasibility of integrating a cost-effective ventilation model for these homes.
This project is a joint effort between Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Center of Excellence at the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia in Lima, Peru. Once the ventilation system design is confirmed to be easily implemented and effective at reducing indoor air pollution, it will serve as the model for other populations in many other regions around the world.
