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Is Conference Room Air Making Us Dumber?

nytimes.com

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Re: Is Conference Room Air Making Us Dumber?

#41

Post by Cthulhu_ »

Klathmon wrote: post #19
Mistletoe wrote: post #5

I own a CO2 monitor and it is shocking how high it can get in a house with two people just existing. 800 ppm or more. Outside air is 410. In a car with air on recirculate, it was getting to >1220 ppm, a level that impairs decision making and lowers brain function. I try to drive with air on fresh from now on. I don’t doubt the air in our conference room with 20 people gets super high in CO2 as the meeting goes on, an…

I picked up a CO2 monitor a while ago myself, and the biggest surprise was having it on in the morning in our bedroom with the doors closed. It was easily over 1000ppm IIRC. Ever since then I've made sure to set my AC system to run the "house fan" for 15 minutes or so every hour at night just to circulate the air in the house, and while the numbers went down significantly, anecdotally I swear that I wake up easier in…

Helmets? That's interesting; I tend to open the visor a bit when at a stop, it gets really warm in there really fast. I know you shouldn't try to take off a helmet in case of an accident, but is opening the visor at least okay?

Re: Is Conference Room Air Making Us Dumber?

#42

Post by soulofmischief »

83457 wrote: post #12
Mistletoe wrote: post #5

I own a CO2 monitor and it is shocking how high it can get in a house with two people just existing. 800 ppm or more. Outside air is 410. In a car with air on recirculate, it was getting to >1220 ppm, a level that impairs decision making and lowers brain function. I try to drive with air on fresh from now on. I don’t doubt the air in our conference room with 20 people gets super high in CO2 as the meeting goes on, an…

How does air recirculation with increasing co2 compare to having to breath/smell car exhaust, cigarette smoke, etc through vents? I started doing recirculation as my default years ago due to that.

Isn't that just... what outside smells like? What do you do about smelling people's breath in the air (??) whenever you exit your car?

Re: Is Conference Room Air Making Us Dumber?

#43

Post by Klathmon »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #41
Klathmon wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I picked up a CO2 monitor a while ago myself, and the biggest surprise was having it on in the morning in our bedroom with the doors closed. It was easily over 1000ppm IIRC. Ever since then I've made sure to set my AC system to run the "house fan" for 15 minutes or so every hour at night just to circulate the air in the house, and while the numbers went down significantly, anecdotally I swear that I wake up easier in…

Helmets? That's interesting; I tend to open the visor a bit when at a stop, it gets really warm in there really fast. I know you shouldn't try to take off a helmet in case of an accident, but is opening the visor at least okay?

Yeah ever since I read that, I crack the visor or open it when i'm sitting still.

And for opening the visor in accidents, I'm no expert but I believe it would be safe to do if you can do it without moving their head. IIRC the reason you don't want to take off the helmet is because you could strain their neck doing so. If you could move the visor without moving their head, it probably won't hurt, but at the same time I'm not sure if I'd worry about that in this kind of situation (having seen a motorcycle accident, the amount of co2 that person is breathing is, to me anyway, far down the list behind "call 911" and "make sure they don't get run over again").

I think the findings were more to try and get the helmet manufacturers to design systems which let more air in during an accident or when stopped.

[1] has the study I remember reading about, and it turns out that according to their abstract, opening the visor at a stop has little effect on average! So maybe my behaviour of cracking the visor isn't doing much...

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15893291

Re: Is Conference Room Air Making Us Dumber?

#44

Post by SilasX »

Klathmon wrote: post #19
Mistletoe wrote: post #5

I own a CO2 monitor and it is shocking how high it can get in a house with two people just existing. 800 ppm or more. Outside air is 410. In a car with air on recirculate, it was getting to >1220 ppm, a level that impairs decision making and lowers brain function. I try to drive with air on fresh from now on. I don’t doubt the air in our conference room with 20 people gets super high in CO2 as the meeting goes on, an…

I picked up a CO2 monitor a while ago myself, and the biggest surprise was having it on in the morning in our bedroom with the doors closed. It was easily over 1000ppm IIRC. Ever since then I've made sure to set my AC system to run the "house fan" for 15 minutes or so every hour at night just to circulate the air in the house, and while the numbers went down significantly, anecdotally I swear that I wake up easier in…

Is that why they seem to revert to the childlike state where they think it’s fun to rev the engine as loud as they can?

Re: Is Conference Room Air Making Us Dumber?

#45

Post by graeme »

maxlybbert wrote: post #40
blattimwind wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

School classrooms (20-30 people, 1-2 hours, closed windows, no ventilation) are probably worse than any conference room.

My senior year, the high school installed blowers in each classroom. We were told it was required by a new California law. I’m not sure it was an improvement: the blowers were noisy and made the classrooms much less comfortable (colder in winter, warmer in summer; it was an older school and the HVAC systems weren’t great). Teachers constantly talked about how they wanted to destroy the blowers. I seriously doubt grad…

Buildings used to be much draughtier, so it wasn't so much an issue.

My landlord at my old place was always adding new insulation. Co2 levels there would get really high with windows shut. My new apartment has much lower ambient co2. Both were built 100 years ago.

I think people also used to leave windows open a bit, even in winter. My (Canadian) grandma always did, and I hear it was the custom in Germany.

Modern buildings are made to be hermetically sealed.

Re: Is Conference Room Air Making Us Dumber?

#46

Post by graeme »

k__ wrote: post #10
Mistletoe wrote: post #5

I own a CO2 monitor and it is shocking how high it can get in a house with two people just existing. 800 ppm or more. Outside air is 410. In a car with air on recirculate, it was getting to >1220 ppm, a level that impairs decision making and lowers brain function. I try to drive with air on fresh from now on. I don’t doubt the air in our conference room with 20 people gets super high in CO2 as the meeting goes on, an…

How many plants are needed to counter this?

Doesn't work. Try exhaling near a co2 monitor and you'll see why. Humans emit a ton of co2, relative to indoor space size.

Ventilation is the only solution.

Re: Is Conference Room Air Making Us Dumber?

#47

Post by graeme »

neilv wrote: post #38

I try to always have windows open at least a bit. Boston winters sometimes make cracking open windows impractical, but if you're in a typical old multi-unit building with old steam/water centrally-controlled heating, there's a good chance that your unit is too warm anyway (though some other units might be too cold). I've heard that some of these old heating systems were even designed assuming cracked-open windows. Th…

For anyone considering this in a winter area: you only need a window open a crack to ventilate a whole apartment. More circulation happens due to the heat differential (I think?)

In any case it has little effect on heating bills. My canadian grandma actually used to have a window cracked open all winter, and she was rather frugal. My own heating bills changed little since I started.

Re: Is Conference Room Air Making Us Dumber?

#49

Post by [deleted] »

ryandvm wrote: post #39
groby_b wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

800ppm is a fairly typical value for indoor CO2 and not really that shocking. Fun fact: We've known since ~1850[1] that we should probably stay below 1000ppm for indoors, but we based the measure back then on body odor :) (It still bugs me that oddly cognitive impairment starts at the same point a body-odor measure from the 1800s put CO2 levels, and I keep wondering if we're seeing confirmation bias in action) In gen…

Fascinating. If you were a fan of evolutionary origin stories, you could easily imagine that the negative association with body odor is an evolved "canary in the coal mine" mechanism. That is, once you start being irritated by your cave-mates BO, it's time to step outside for some fresh air (before you are asphyxiated). That said, I doubt humanity spent enough time in caves or other restricted airflow environments fo…

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