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Installing air filters in classrooms has large educational benefits?

vox.com

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Re: Installing air filters in classrooms has large educational benefits?

#11

Post by jschwartzi »

derefr wrote: post #8

Half of the reason I enjoy working from home, is that my office has horrible stagnant air. I think far better anywhere (home, coffee shops, the park) that isn't my office.

I've actually purchased a couple of indoor plants, a snake plant and a peace lily, to help generate oxygen indoors. I noticed the air "tasted" better about a week after I put them in the room. And I also noticed the air in my office feels better than the air in my apartment which has no plants. Whether that's something measurable I don't know, but while having these plants here I feel like I perform better.

Re: Installing air filters in classrooms has large educational benefits?

#13

Post by sundvor »

Great article.

It would be interesting if we could monitor productivity in the major Australian CBDs these days. A lot of the big office buildings don't have the capability to filter the unhealthy / toxic bushfire smoke, and the workers get to suffer.

And on that, good luck trying to find any purifiers, anywhere in Australian stores.

Re: Installing air filters in classrooms has large educational benefits?

#14

Post by pbhjpbhj »

voxic11 wrote: post #7
toomuchtodo wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.npr.org/2018/08/27/642321572/scientists-link-air...

Article says > It's not clear precisely how pollution impacts cognitive decline, though Chen suggests that pollution may have a negative effect on the brain's white matter, which could vary between men and women. As NPR has reported, "the brain's white matter coordinates communication among brain regions." > James Hendrix, the director of Global Science Initiatives at the Alzheimer's Association, was skeptical of the…

Re the second quote, what about lead levels (in air or water pollution), I thought they'd been linked pretty effectively with cognition issues.

Re: Installing air filters in classrooms has large educational benefits?

#15

Post by sundvor »

ajra wrote: post #12

Assuming the filters do what the article supposes they do, what would be the cheapest and easiest way to test the air quality in my home and workplace?

You could build your own with a Raspberry Pie and an sds011 sensor.

Edit: Example @ https://aqicn.org/sensor/sds011/

Re: Installing air filters in classrooms has large educational benefits?

#16

Post by Luc »

bobcostas55 wrote: post #6

Andrew Gelman: "No, I don’t think that this study offers good evidence that installing air filters in classrooms has surprisingly large educational benefits." https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2020/01/09/no-i-dont-...

This is so good! Gelman's comments on the study are a better HN post than this article.

This is important stuff - you can already see people researching air filters in other comments, taking the supposed results of this study as settled truth.

Re: Installing air filters in classrooms has large educational benefits?

#17

Post by AngryData »

montecarl wrote: post #2

Is there any known mechanism through which air quality affects cognitive performance? The article does not suggest or refer to any research on the subject.

Increased CO2 levels in the air will reduce mental performance. I mean it isn't a ton unless you are seriously sealed up, and I don't know about particulates and other pollution. But a poorly ventilated room can have CO2 level rise double that of a well ventilated room and has been measured both in actual rooms and building CO2 levels and with subjects being tested for mental performance under experimental conditions with controlled CO2 levels.

Re: Installing air filters in classrooms has large educational benefits?

#18

Post by tlb »

voxic11 wrote: post #9
MS90 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6138768/ https://www.pnas.org/content/115/37/9193 https://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/07-08/smog

Your first link says the mechanism is unknown right in the beginning. Third link doesn't mention mechanisms at all. Only the second link attempts some guesses. But it still concludes that "It is beyond the scope of this paper to test the exact mechanism, so we leave it as agenda for future research."

Typically, knowing the mechanism comes long after solid evidence of the effect.

The mechanisms by which cigarettes cause lung cancer are surprisingly complex and weren't fully understood for a long time, but it's obvious that some kind of mechanism is plausible.

So usually the bar for taking something seriously is: statistical evidence of a significant harmful effect, and at least one plausible hypothesis for a mechanism. But you don't have to be sure of the mechanism.

Re: Installing air filters in classrooms has large educational benefits?

#19

Post by Someone1234 »

Luc wrote: post #16
bobcostas55 wrote: post #6

Andrew Gelman: "No, I don’t think that this study offers good evidence that installing air filters in classrooms has surprisingly large educational benefits." https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2020/01/09/no-i-dont-...

This is so good! Gelman's comments on the study are a better HN post than this article. This is important stuff - you can already see people researching air filters in other comments, taking the supposed results of this study as settled truth.

I'd just like to say, before the mods change the thread link, that the original article is important to understand the context of why air filters were installed.

Even if the Vox article is potentially flawed you need to read both to grasp the full picture.

Re: Installing air filters in classrooms has large educational benefits?

#20

Post by burfog »

At home it matters too. I recover faster from chest colds when I remember to keep the HEPA filter running. (instead of a simple speed knob, it boots up to a multilingual color display that I can't even dim, and of course the filter defaults to "off")

Here is a common air quality problem. Anybody have ideas?

My house is in a hot and humid area, so I run the air conditioning most of the year. The duct work appears to be made of bare fiberglass pressed into sheets, with foil on the outside. This is cheap, quiet, and thermally insulating. It does however have a soft highly porous surface that collects black mold.

It doesn't appear possible to do anything about the mold. Thanks to the soft porous surface, scrubbing would tear up the ducts and be ineffective.

Ideally the ducts would have a polished bare silver surface, sturdy enough to scrub. Well, nobody has that, it would be expensive, and I'd have to rip out the drywall of nearly every room in order to install something like that.

What do I do?

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