Apollo targets health care market with detection tech

FALL RIVER – Apollo Safety Inc. said it formed a healthcare division to address growing demand from hospitals and other medical facilities for its gas detection and monitoring services.

Apollo President John C. Carvalho III said the 19-year-old, 18-employee firm has seen growing demand from the medical field for its services lately amid growing awareness of the risks posed by gases, such as carbon monoxide, produced by industrial and medical equipment.

Carvalho said one recent client was a hospital where rooftop heat exchangers were leaking carbon monoxide, which can be deadly and often goes unnoticed until symptoms begin to show.

“In a hospital setting, where you have people who are already ill, it’s harder to detect those symptoms,” he said, adding that many hospitals require monitoring of gases used in sterilization or sedation. Apollo designs, installs and maintains monitoring systems that can notify a facilities manager

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Awareness of risks in any setting is growing, Carvalho said, pointing to the February incident in New York in which carbon monoxide levels reached dangerous levels inside a restaurant, killing one employee and sending more than 20 people to hospitals.

“No one goes to the hospital to get sick,” he said. “There’s a lot of concern, kind of in the background, about indoor air quality in those settings and it can be compromised by many things, not just viruses and bacteria.”

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