Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you want a more international / american version, check out purple air: https://www2.purpleair.com/
Is purple air the proprietary version?
No it's another independent community effort, go read it's about page.
The cognitive costs of air pollution
241–250 of 300 posts
Re: The cognitive costs of air pollution
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
And f) most passive house designs have humidity/mold issues down the road, unless proper and frequent maintenance is done. (I've read about passiv haus and similar a while back).
There is a slow moving disaster in the Midwest where houses constructed in the last 25 years are rotting from the inside due to leaks and internal condensation. Problems are. Sealed construction means moisture can't escape. Think insulation hides problems until major damage occurs. I'm also skeptical because houses we build today should be in use a 100 years from now. And it's really obvious that renewables aren't su…
We built a ton of them here in Sweden, but the name escapes me. They were marketed with being able to last for 'at least 20 years' when being built, which should have been a warning sign not to spend $1m on for it on a <$100k family income.
Re: The cognitive costs of air pollution
#243Anyone interested should also check out the open source citizen science project https://luftdaten.info/en/ Build your own inexpensive sensor, contribute to the global network. See also https://github.com/opendata-stuttgart
I'd love to set up something like this in my garden. Could I figure this out without speaking German?
Certainly. When using the flashing tool referenced here: https://luftdaten.info/en/construction-manual/
...you simply select the English firmware `latest_en.bin`. Or one of the languages you prefer.
Re: The cognitive costs of air pollution
#244> "Exposure to CO2 and VOCs at levels found in conventional office buildings was associated with lower cognitive scores than those associated with levels of these compounds found in a Green building." – Allen et al 2016. The effect seems to kick in at around 1,000 ppm of CO2. The last time this came up I bought a CO2 meter for my office. I was quite surprised how often it went over 1,000. Outside air runs around 450.…
Does anyone know of a cheap IoT type sensor for CO2? It can be any type, even RasberryPi or Arduino based. I'm not interested in sensors without connectivity options. About the levels, I'm working on an IoT project and I've seen data from a public school that has heating with radiators (so no real ventilation). One classroom with the sensor would routinely rise above 1000 ppm, with peaks over 3000ppm. Then you'd obse…
I bought this guy for the office - works well https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B00TH3OW4Q
Re: The cognitive costs of air pollution
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does fracking cause much air pollution of the type discussed in the article? I thought the main issue was groundwater and earth quakes , and methane gas release / flaring. Plus there are many countryside areas with no oil.
Well to their point, there is more wood, brush or other similar types of burning in rural areas. Especially wood in the US as it is the source of heating homes in rural areas. Bonfires, etc are also more likely. Whether or not that translates into more risk for your exposure to small particles is probably related to where you are (e.g. are you inside the house while the wood is burning, probably, so you are close to…
Pretty sure there's more smoke from forest fires near California cities than smoke from brush fires in rural towns.
I don't know of anyone who uses a wood stove. Most would use natural gas, propane, or electric. Electric is common until you get too far North, then it's cheaper to get fuel.
It's very nice to live out here. You can see the stars and breathe fresh air.
Source: live in rural town.
Re: The cognitive costs of air pollution
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
The other upside to sealing plus mechanical ventilation (instead of leaky-building ventilation) is that your building is always fresh. Leak-driven ventilation leads to a building that is drafty on windy days and stuffy on calm days.
Except these heat exchangers have two filters that need cleaning very 3 months and most people never do it, so they don't really function properly.
Is the 3 months interval a regional thing, or based on the heat exchanger? Mine have 1 year intervals, and with a subscription for filters it is easy to remember to change the filters
Re: The cognitive costs of air pollution
#247> "Exposure to CO2 and VOCs at levels found in conventional office buildings was associated with lower cognitive scores than those associated with levels of these compounds found in a Green building." – Allen et al 2016. The effect seems to kick in at around 1,000 ppm of CO2. The last time this came up I bought a CO2 meter for my office. I was quite surprised how often it went over 1,000. Outside air runs around 450.…
Does anyone know of a cheap IoT type sensor for CO2? It can be any type, even RasberryPi or Arduino based. I'm not interested in sensors without connectivity options. About the levels, I'm working on an IoT project and I've seen data from a public school that has heating with radiators (so no real ventilation). One classroom with the sensor would routinely rise above 1000 ppm, with peaks over 3000ppm. Then you'd obse…
There are a bunch of raw sensor components that you can connect to an Arduino or Pi. I ended up going with the Sensirion SCD30 but also tested options from Amphenol's Telaire line. Both are pretty easy to communicate with using an Arduino.
I haven't tested an MH-Z19 but that's a popular cheap option.
Re: The cognitive costs of air pollution
#248Anyone interested should also check out the open source citizen science project https://luftdaten.info/en/ Build your own inexpensive sensor, contribute to the global network. See also https://github.com/opendata-stuttgart
It frustrates me that there are so many of these networks and they don't talk to each other. I deliberately went with a system that measures multiple values, but then I see other people going "we only measure one thing instead of nine so our units cost half as much". I should try to script at least my systems so they write into as many of the open networks as I can manage. https://www.uradmonitor.com/
Unfortunately, yes, the space is fragmented. A long while ago I chose https://luftdaten.info/en/ because sensor firmware, DB, and tools are truly open source (GPL, ODbL, MIT). Next to supporting many sensors, it also allows for your own back-ends (API, InfluxDB). The community is awesome and has hacker values.
The inexpensive part makes citizen science viable in sub-economic and hobbyist settings.
https://openaq.org/ is trying to consolidate air quality data, but I'm uncertain of their licensing and goals.
Re: The cognitive costs of air pollution
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
Based on my reading of the table, the PurpleAir II sensors seemed to be the best of the sub $300 for PM1.0 (field R^2 of 0.96 to 0.98) and PM2.5 (field R^2 of 0.93 to 0.97). The PM10 readings were not as good (field R^2 of 0.66 to 0.70). After skimming the rest of the table, it looks like the PurpleAir II sensors might have some of the best field R^2 for PM 2.5 and PM 1.0
That sensor is also available from Adafruit: https://www.adafruit.com/product/3686 I got it hooked up to a RaspberryPi that exposes sensor readings in Prometheus format.
Do you have a PurpleAir II to compare against? I suspect that there will be some extra calibration or signal processing some to make it more accurate that will be missing in the raw sensor.
EDIT: The link we're discussing says this explicitly: "[...] These particle counts are processed by the sensor using a complex algorithm to calculate the PM1.0, PM2.5 & PM10 mass in ug/m3. [...] PurpleAir PA-II uses two identical PMS5003 sensor units attached to each other and placed in the same shelter. [...]"
I don't think you can recommend the PMS5003 as a substitute for the PurpleAir II.
Re: The cognitive costs of air pollution
#250How do you all monitor air quality? I personally have a couple of devices (an Awair and a Flow). They seem to under-report PM2.5 compared to purpleair, airnow, and waqi.
I've built my own "IoT" Sensors by hooking up a bunch of components to an ESP32 on a breadboard. I ended up going with:
- CO2: Sensirion SCD30
- Particulates: Amphenol SM-UART-04L
- VOC: Sensirion SGP30
- Temperature/humidity/pressure: Bosch BME680
After hooking everything up I just wrote some code to pipe sensor readings to InfluxDB, which is connected to Grafana.
In the end I have no way of properly testing accuracy but the sensors are consistent between units and behave as expected when exposed to fresh air, which is the most I can look at right now.