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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?

#51

Post by blattimwind »

graeme wrote: post #45
maxlybbert wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bui…

> I hear it was the custom in Germany.

At least when I went to school it was almost impossible to keep a window open except on the hottest days of summers because inevitably n>1 [almost always] girls would start to complain about draft. (edit: is draft in a room with only one opening to the outside a social construct?)

That being said I always keep the window open in my office. There is no draft.

Re: Is Conference Room Air Making Us Dumber?

#52

Post by sjg007 »

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.

Most cars should be leaky enough to get fresh air in at the same time. This is why you smell skunks even on recirculate.

Re: Is Conference Room Air Making Us Dumber?

#53

Post by dredmorbius »

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.

Generally, use recirc only briefly when driving through heavy exhaust, smoke, dust, chemicals, smells. Return to fresh air once you've cleared that.

Some sources suggest recirc for heavy traffic -- I'd prefer a good filtration system.

And for rapidly heating or cooling a car, recirc can help. My preference is to open windows & sunroof (where present) to flush out hot air first, in hot weather. In cold weather, the heater won't kick in until the engine has warmed up, so recirc before that buys you little. And recirc + heat can result in fogged windows, so you may want to turn in the AC as well to rduce humidity. (Many cars now activate AC when defrost is selected.)

I rarely keep recirculated air set for more than a minute or two, most often far less.

Re: Is Conference Room Air Making Us Dumber?

#56

Post by maxlybbert »

graeme wrote: post #45
maxlybbert wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bui…

When I was in elementary school, one of my classmates ended up missing school for a while because of a bad heater and carbon monoxide poisoning. That freaked me out. But everything I read was that this was a relatively new problem because newer houses were less drafty than old houses. It wasn’t clear to me (at the time) whether old houses were draftier when built, although I have to assume they were (otherwise carbon monoxide poisoning would have been just as common when those houses were new).

I even remember wearing sweaters indoors when I was young. I assumed that was an effort to save money during the so-called Energy Crisis (better described as a shortage of cheap oil), but it may have just been the natural reaction to inefficient heaters and the building standards at the time.

Re: Is Conference Room Air Making Us Dumber?

#57

Post by asdfman123 »

sevensor wrote: post #20
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.

Apparently there was a fad for building schools with no windows. There's a 70s era middle school in the (U.S.) town where I live; it won a design award for its total lack of fenestration. It was supposed to reduce distraction or something.

My schools were all like that. "Kids aren't paying attention to our standardized-test preparation studies! Perhaps we should make schools more like bleak prisons, and force people to spend the bulk of their formative years there! That will certainly result in a more capable general populace."

Re: Is Conference Room Air Making Us Dumber?

#58

Post by dredmorbius »

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?

A typical person exhales just over 1kg of CO2 daily. You'd need emough plants to fix about the same amount of CO2 from the air, under indoor, shaded conditions.

https://www.reference.com/science/much-co2-human-exhale-3f8c...

The fastest rate of carbon fixation by any plants are photosynthetic algae eds, which fix u to 4.4 kg of carbon per square meter per year, or 16.3kg CO2/(m^2 * yr).

http://carbon.ycombinator.com/ocean-phytoplankton/

That works out to about 22 m^2 or 240 ft^2 of algae.

Most land plants offer at best about 1/10th this rate, in full sunlight, and far less in indirect, partial, or shaded light.

A lot.

Re: Is Conference Room Air Making Us Dumber?

#59

Post by dredmorbius »

netcan wrote: post #21
mrfusion wrote: post #7

What if all of humanity’s bad decisions are caused by this? Imagine if we started holding board meetings, etc outdoors and we fixed all our problems. Maybe an idea for a book?

That'd be how Socrates would have done it.

Management by peripateticating.

Re: Is Conference Room Air Making Us Dumber?

#60

Post by Raphmedia »

brilee wrote: post #22

No. I wrote up the computations explaining why. See http://www.moderndescartes.com/essays/co2_closed_rooms/

> At 5 millibars (5,000 ppm), you would start breathing at a 10% elevated rate, which you probably wouldn’t notice.

Wouldn't you? Won't you subconsciously notice and want to end the meeting faster?

Imagine breathing at an elevated rate in a crowded room that lacks proper ventilation. There's more than co2 coming from the human body. People will begin sweating, farting, etc., and fill the air with all kinds of pollutants. The computers, screens, dry erase board, etc. will make the situation even worst.

I know that such a room will make me want to make quick decisions to leave quickly.

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