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Smog in our brains

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Re: Smog in our brains

#51

Post by verelo »

Houshalter wrote: post #33
addicted wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea. The real problem was fightng against a technology that is more expensive yhan cleaner options, has massive NIMBY problems that are not yet resolved, gets more expensive as time goes on, has led to massive cpncentrated disasters and still is unable to find a solution to its long term problems. A technology whose proponents's best answer even today is "wait until the next breakthrough". Nuclear: The one trick the…

If we had adopted nuclear power decades ago, none of that would be an issue. Solar power is only just now catching up to cost effectiveness with nuclear. And only on sunny days, the storage problem is very far away from being solved. Maybe coal is cheaper, but only if you exclude externalities. The amount of radiation released by nuclear is tiny compared to coal. Not to mention mercury, carbon dioxide, etc.

>> "Maybe coal is cheaper"

Many make this claim, but I do not buy it.

Take Australia as an example: relies on coal for around 85% of electricity production [1], also has some of the most expensive electricity in the western world [2] at around 29c / USD Kilowatt hour (that is over 2x the US national average).

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20070709212140/http://www.iea.or...

[2] https://www.ovoenergy.com/guides/energy-guides/average-elect...

Re: Smog in our brains

#52

Post by sliverstorm »

Houshalter wrote: post #20
dsego wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders." http://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995

Nonsense. This has nothing to do with the planet being destroyed, but minor health effects of air pollution. Which in first world countries, is vastly less than it used to be. And could be eliminated entirely in a few years with technology like solar power and electric cars. Possibly it could have been seriously cut back decades ago, if environmentalists hadn't fought so hard against nuclear.

I think your parent was being humorous.

But I do agree with the sentiment that anti-nuclear environmentalists fell victim to perfect is the enemy of good, and unintentionally stuck us with the dirtiest option.

Re: Smog in our brains

#53

Post by observation »

You should be worried about IAQ - indoor air quality.

This is because you spend 90% of your time indoors.

It is also because IAQ is far worse than outdoor air quality. The kitchens of most homes would be closed down by inspectors if they were commercial.

Correctly ventilating a home with a ERV/HRV, bathroom ventilation and oven hood (harder than it sounds because many designs are snake oil) solves the problem. Few people have gone to such lengths, not even the wealthy.

The "Building Performance Podcast" has more information if anybody's interested. There's a lot of good information online from US government websites.

Most American homes share a leaky wall with their garage. A garage with shelves of highly toxic substances that offgas through the wall when the weather gets hotter.

I intend to design my home so it does not contain these drawbacks.

Re: Smog in our brains

#54

Post by louprado »

Can anyone recommend an air quality detector for personal use. My second floor office is in downtown Oakland by a busy road. The windows are closed and an air filter is always running. Perhaps the air filter is providing a false sense of security and not trapping any sub 2.5 micron particles.

My last air quality detector seemed questionable. I could leave the windows open during rush hour it would always just say the quality was good. Meanwhile there is soot on my window sill.

Re: Smog in our brains

#55

Post by Houshalter »

freeflight wrote: post #39
Houshalter wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we had adopted nuclear power decades ago, none of that would be an issue. Solar power is only just now catching up to cost effectiveness with nuclear. And only on sunny days, the storage problem is very far away from being solved. Maybe coal is cheaper, but only if you exclude externalities. The amount of radiation released by nuclear is tiny compared to coal. Not to mention mercury, carbon dioxide, etc.

>If we had adopted nuclear power decades ago, none of that would be an issue. Then we would have even more problems with final disposal than we already have, that's the topic none of the pro-nuclear people ever want to touch on because they fully realize it's quite an issue. As is, it's already bad enough how plant operators socialize these long-term costs while keeping all the profits private, which is the only way…

Even despite that, it's still better than coal. The costs are just more concentrated, and therefore more apparent. But the fact it's concentrated also make it at least possible to contain and cleanup. No one would even attempt to cleanup the environmental damage caused by coal, and it would cost vastly more than hundreds of billions. The estimated deaths are much larger than from nuclear accidents.

If we had invested more in Nuclear it would be less of an issue. We've invented much safer reactors, and more efficient ones that produce much less waste. Probably much more would have been developed if the investment was there.

Re: Smog in our brains

#56

Post by semi-extrinsic »

louprado wrote: post #54

Can anyone recommend an air quality detector for personal use. My second floor office is in downtown Oakland by a busy road. The windows are closed and an air filter is always running. Perhaps the air filter is providing a false sense of security and not trapping any sub 2.5 micron particles. My last air quality detector seemed questionable. I could leave the windows open during rush hour it would always just say the…

There are sufficiently many aspects of air quality (NOX, PM2.5, PM10, O3, SO2, CO, CO2, VOCs, humidity) that a basic trustworthy monitoring station would set you back at least $500. I'd say get a trustworthy temp/humidity/CO2 sensor, since those are the only ones you really emit yourself, and get the remaining data from your local environmental info agency - check e.g. aqicn.org .

Edit: is your air filter a HEPA unit? (Does it look like a big car engine air filter?) Do you change the filter every 6 months? Those should help.

Re: Smog in our brains

#57

Post by freeflight »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #9
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someday people may also look back at the television and the smartphone and compare the garbage we call mass media that we put into our minds to the lead in Roman water pipes.

If they did, I would hope people around them recognized that their conflation of neurotoxins in water and largely benign electronics makes very little sense. I think I understand the sentiment, but I don't think the three are the same. And if they had similar results, hypothetically, they would be for entirely different reasons. edit: I'm interested to know more about peoples' concerns about smartphones and other dev…

> If they did, I would hope people around them recognized that their conflation of neurotoxins in water and largely benign electronics makes very little sense.

Right now we consider these electronics, and their emissions, largely benign but that doesn't mean that's actually the case in the long term.

Think about the amount of wireless stuff constantly going on around you: GSM, EDGE, UMTS, LTE, bluetooth, several WLAN standards, radio, satellite and so on. Humanity has never been blasted with that much EM radiation before and the blast is constant and pretty much ever-present. I find it hard to believe that all those EMR don't have any effects at all on living things. Sure, we get doses of it anyway from space and the sun and so on, but that doesn't mean that adding our own won't make the doses cross a threshold.

Wouldn't be the first time humanity underestimated the long-term effect of something just to realize, a couple of decades down the line, "Oopps.. wasn't as healthy as we thought".

Re: Smog in our brains

#58

Post by ams6110 »

gbrown wrote: post #27
leggomylibro wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I definitely get a little worried about fumes, in a modern urban city. Diesel pollutants are local, and when I walk across a 4+ lane street with traffic, I always find myself practically gagging on exhaust fumes. That can't be healthy. We should really ban big diesel rigs from areas with population density above a certain threshold. Especially considering how little the regulations around diesel emissions are actuall…

I think national emissions standards would also be nice. My state doesn't emissions test vehicles (not even commercial vehicles), and it's obvious when you're driving or biking behind someone with a clearly malfunctioning car. Ick.

You can really tell how much cleaner modern cars are though, when you pass a "classic" 1950 - 1970s model on the road. You can smell the unburned fuel/exhaust distinctly. And back in the day you'd have gotten a dose of lead along with it.

Re: Smog in our brains

#59

Post by bostonvaulter2 »

observation wrote: post #53

You should be worried about IAQ - indoor air quality. This is because you spend 90% of your time indoors. It is also because IAQ is far worse than outdoor air quality. The kitchens of most homes would be closed down by inspectors if they were commercial. Correctly ventilating a home with a ERV/HRV, bathroom ventilation and oven hood (harder than it sounds because many designs are snake oil) solves the problem. Few pe…

Is there an easy way to measure your indoor air quality?

Re: Smog in our brains

#60

Post by simongray »

bostonvaulter2 wrote: post #59
observation wrote: post #53

You should be worried about IAQ - indoor air quality. This is because you spend 90% of your time indoors. It is also because IAQ is far worse than outdoor air quality. The kitchens of most homes would be closed down by inspectors if they were commercial. Correctly ventilating a home with a ERV/HRV, bathroom ventilation and oven hood (harder than it sounds because many designs are snake oil) solves the problem. Few pe…

Is there an easy way to measure your indoor air quality?

I live in Beijing and we use the air purifiers from Xiaomi to measure indoor air quality (and clean it up). It's true that eg frying bacon really makes the air quality index spike up a lot.
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