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On whether changes in bedroom CO2 levels affect sleep quality

gwern.net

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Re: On whether changes in bedroom CO2 levels affect sleep quality

#41
post #39

Went looking for devices for the bedroom, but ran into an article about plants that might help in that setting: https://thewgnews.com/planting-hope-air-cleaning-house-plant...

Those scrub the air of pollutants. No way they lower co2 sufficiently though. Plants reduce co2 by growing. Which they do....slowly. By contrast a human will spike the air in a room quickly by breathing.

Re: On whether changes in bedroom CO2 levels affect sleep quality

#42
post #12

I'm eager to hear the results. I recently got an Awair 2.0 after seeing this talk by DHH: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRqh8oLY7Ik It quickly confirmed that, without turning my thermostat fan to "ON", my bedroom CO2 jumps from about 1000 ppm to 2000 ppm within a couple hours of us going to sleep. In the fall, my wife and I started waking up in the middle of the night feeling like we couldn't breathe. What I figure…

You'd need hundreds of houseplants to mitigate the co2 created by one person completely, I am not sure if a few would be better than nothing.

Re: On whether changes in bedroom CO2 levels affect sleep quality

#43
post #20
post #12

I'm eager to hear the results. I recently got an Awair 2.0 after seeing this talk by DHH: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRqh8oLY7Ik It quickly confirmed that, without turning my thermostat fan to "ON", my bedroom CO2 jumps from about 1000 ppm to 2000 ppm within a couple hours of us going to sleep. In the fall, my wife and I started waking up in the middle of the night feeling like we couldn't breathe. What I figure…

Install an air exchanger. Panasonic makes some that are reasonably priced.

Do these need to be a whole house system or can they be installed just in one room?

Re: On whether changes in bedroom CO2 levels affect sleep quality

#44
post #24
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not any time soon, as far as I'm aware. According to [0] a fancy article from Business Insider, the rate of increase is 2ppm/yr, on average. But many studies suggest cognitive effects of CO2 levels as low as 1,000ppm. See: https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/10.1289/ehp.1510037 [0]: https://www.businessinsider.com/carbon-dioxide-record-human-...

Thanks! So 2ppm/year gives us another 300 yrs to top 1000 ppm. I guess we’re safe for now! Rock on

Indoor air is 1000+ in most places that don't actively ventilate. The higher outside air is, the less effective ventilation will be.

Re: On whether changes in bedroom CO2 levels affect sleep quality

#45
Self experiments like these are a great re-enforcement of how insanely hard it is to do accurate, reproducible science. This submission tells us absolutely nothing due to the lack of rigor applied.

SO many potential confounding variables, there is zero value in what is being done here.

Re: On whether changes in bedroom CO2 levels affect sleep quality

#46
post #41
post #39

Went looking for devices for the bedroom, but ran into an article about plants that might help in that setting: https://thewgnews.com/planting-hope-air-cleaning-house-plant...

Those scrub the air of pollutants. No way they lower co2 sufficiently though. Plants reduce co2 by growing. Which they do....slowly. By contrast a human will spike the air in a room quickly by breathing.

That's interesting, I was just linking the article because it was talking specifically about co2 and NASA recommendations. In fairness, it didn't give any hard numbers on what to expect.

Re: On whether changes in bedroom CO2 levels affect sleep quality

#47
post #38
post #28

”But if one room can mix with and increase the Netatmo’s room all the way up to 1934PPM, what must the original concentration have been like?” Why not move the weather station to the bedroom for a couple of nights? (And make sure the sensor is at nose/mouth height, preferably close to it. CO2 is heavier than air, so concentrations may be higher closer to the floor in a closed room with little movement) I would also d…

"Why not move the weather station to the bedroom for a couple of nights?" which he did, not too far further into the article?

Oops. I thought I skimmed the text well enough to detect that, but apparently was looking too much for the graph “CO2 concentration over time during the night” that to me, seemed obvious as the thing that had to be there.

Re: On whether changes in bedroom CO2 levels affect sleep quality

#48
FWIW, I have almost no dream recall, and am not as rested, when the window is sealed shut. We are four humans and two cats (usually) in a small-ish bedroom, creating a lot of co2. There is built-in ventilation in each room, but performance starts declining 2 weeks after every filter change (which cost €20). So I swap the filter only once every 1-2 months, and instead open the window ever so slightly (moving the lever just a bit towards open position, weakening the seal). Voila, perfect dream recall and much better rested the day after.

Re: On whether changes in bedroom CO2 levels affect sleep quality

#49
post #29

I was lucky to get my hands on 5 proper co2 sensors from university, while I was teaching and working. So plenty of test places. What I found: -Just a couple of hours in a office, without ventilation spikes the co2 enough to make everyone dizzy and tired by the end of the day. Keeping eye on the meter and ventilating properly, increased everyones productivity and people werent so tired by the end of the day. - Classr…

Air tight buildings need a heat recovery ventilator.

Re: On whether changes in bedroom CO2 levels affect sleep quality

#50
post #12

I'm eager to hear the results. I recently got an Awair 2.0 after seeing this talk by DHH: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRqh8oLY7Ik It quickly confirmed that, without turning my thermostat fan to "ON", my bedroom CO2 jumps from about 1000 ppm to 2000 ppm within a couple hours of us going to sleep. In the fall, my wife and I started waking up in the middle of the night feeling like we couldn't breathe. What I figure…

You'd need hundreds of houseplants to mitigate the co2 created by one person completely, I am not sure if a few would be better than nothing.

There are more variables at play than just co2, humans are not perfectly elastic spherical CO2 emitters ;)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Clean_Air_Study https://www.apa.org/monitor/apr01/greengood.aspx

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