A casino can survive without slots, poker or table games, but there’s one item every casino needs: air.
And engineering a solution for cleaner casino air has been the goal for three decades for Denny Barringer, CEO of Casino Air, Inc.
“Clean air is good business,” Barringer says. Air quality is often listed as the No. 1 casino complaint by patrons, especially in Nevada, which allows smoking, and at the more than 460 tribal casinos, which are sovereign and thus not subject to a state’s clean indoor air act. (New casinos opening, especially in the Northeast, may be non-smoking, but others continue to permit smoking.)
Barringer notes that each casino property is different, and those developed more recently have different technology than older casinos.
“There are twists,” Barringer says. “We look at the survey and we look in detail at all of the HVAC at any part of the smoking venue. Then we engineer a solution.”
Barringer started Clean Air Systems Inc. in 1972. The company soon became known as the premier indoor air quality expert in the hospitality and recreation industries in the western United States. The company also had a large client base of smaller gaming operators, such as card rooms and bingo facilities, in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Alaska.
“Meanwhile, we were also seeking ways to provide the same service for bigger smoking-related businesses, particularly large casinos,” he says.
Barringer says sometimes the company needs to use four or five technologies to reach an optimal result. In developing the Casino Air product line, he had three main goals: 1.) The technology had to work better than anything else; 2.) The technology has to be invisible to the customers and 3.) The technology has to be simple to own and operate.
“It’s an engineered fix, there is no magic box,” he says. “But we’ve done so many of them that we’ve seen about everything. We’re a step ahead of the game in that respect.”
Barringer points to his company’s trademarked Molecular Oxidizer as a common thread in most projects. The oxidizer destroys odor, gases and carcinogens.
“Once we’re done with the installation, you don’t have to guess about the results,” Barringer says. “It doesn’t take a week or a month. It takes about three air changes, literally within an hour.
“People say to us, ‘It’s like you threw a switch.’”
Barringer is particularly irked that some casinos choose to simply mask their smoky casinos with perfume, rather than install a cleaner system.
“The big issue with treating the smoke with perfume is that it doubles the toxicity, which is bad for the players and even worse for the employees, who spend more time there,” Barringer says.
Barringer hopes recent regulations requiring Safety Data Sheets to reveal the chemical contents of perfumes could compel a change. If the toxins are documented, the casinos can then
be more readily subject to consumer complaints, which could convince casinos to switch to a more effective way of scrubbing the air.
“I could care less if anyone spent a dime with our company as long as they ditch the perfume. To me, it’s more of a humanitarian issue for the employees,” he says. “Why not go to the gas chamber if you’re going to work 48 hours a week on the floor and they’re pumping chemicals through the supply ducts down to the breathing zone and you’re sucking that up.
“Believe me: over a period of time, you’re going to get sick.”
