The health benefits of better air • Hacker News Board

Re: The health benefits of better air

#81

Post by owenversteeg » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 5:09 AM UTC

graeme wrote: post #15

jostmey wrote: post #7

I love this article. But the article misses the use of plants to improve air quality! HEPA air filters can't filter out nano-sized pollutants

Are they actually effective in anything but a sealed space shuttle? Nasa is the source of the plant air quality experiments people reference. In anything but that air exchange will happen much faster than a houseplant can grow. I love plants but I can’t imagine they do much unless you have an absolutely massive quantity.

The other issue with plants is that having them in any decent numbers means you’re likely to have at least some with a mold/fungus/pollen issue, so they actually reduce air quality. Outdoors that’s not so much of an issue because there’s airflow and the mold/fungus/pollen is dispersed, while inside your room it’s limited to a very small amount of still air.

Re: The health benefits of better air

#82

Post by randomsquared » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 5:10 AM UTC

Plough_Jogger wrote: post #51

jonnycomputer wrote: post #11

I'm curious whether the issue the author identifies (real or not) with ultrasonic humidifiers applies also to humidifiers that simply blow air through a wet membrane..

I believe these are evaporative and are mentioned: >Just use an evaporative or steam humidifier, which seem to create almost no particles.

this article talks about this more:

https://molekule.science/should-you-choose-an-ultrasonic-hum...

quite interesting

Re: The health benefits of better air

#83

Post by amatecha » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 5:12 AM UTC

ahaucnx wrote: post #9

Thank you for this extensive resource on air quality. Yes, it needs to get more attention as it is one of the main drivers of mortality of environmental risks. One thing one has to bear in mind is that often when you optmize your home for low PM (e.g. with air purifiers and fixing of air leackage) your CO2 will get very high causing headaches and reduce cognitive performance. So it always makes sense for indoor air q…

I'm definitely interested to build one of these. Located in Vancouver Canada. Maybe you can mention in a reply to your own post how people can contact you (if you can't still edit your post)?

Re: The health benefits of better air

#84

Post by amatecha » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 5:14 AM UTC

ReactiveJelly wrote: post #70

modeless wrote: post #28

I'm surprised this doesn't mention gas stoves and ovens. Gas is the "high end" option, yet creates totally unnecessary PM2.5 pollution in your home. Children growing up with gas stoves have higher rates of asthma.

> Gas is the "high end" option Few years ago I moved from a little apartment with an electric range to an SFH with gas everything. "Good for you," my gas-enthusiast family said, "now you have a REAL stove" It still takes forever to boil water in a pot. The food tastes the same. I wonder why furnaces have these fancy high-efficiency heat exchangers and stoves don't? Cost? I wouldn't mind going back to electric. I just…

It does take a while to boil water (although not nearly as long in my experience), and food tastes the same, but there's essentially zero time waiting for the heating element to heat up. For me that's the big difference -- near-instant control over the amount of heat being applied.

Re: The health benefits of better air

#85

Post by randomsquared » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 5:14 AM UTC

PurpleFoxy wrote: post #79

MattGaiser wrote: post #56

I want to get to the point where houses are designed with all the things mentioned in this thread in mind.

First we have to get to the point where basic insulation and noise dampening are figured out. House quality is really terrible.

In the USA yes, especially the west coast. In Poland I was about to get a condo constructed but not doing that anymore, but the process was quite interesting. The insulation blew most everything in the USA out of the water. Mostly because they have no choice given the really cold winters. During the winter pollution gets really bad and if you shut the windows, pollution goes down indoors, but so does CO2. Ideally you have a hepa filter + outdoor A/C that brings in warm filtered air during the winter.

Re: The health benefits of better air

#86

Post by clairity » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 5:14 AM UTC

PurpleFoxy wrote: post #75

clairity wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

co2 and pm should both go down with windows open. i put my air purifiers on low when the windows are open to deal with the particles i throw up by moving around and doing stuff indoors. with the windows closed (usually only at night), i put the air purifiers on medium/high.

I have noticed every time I open my windows, the no2 levels reported on my Dyson filter spike. Not sure what to make of it but it’s interesting.

nox is a combustion byproduct so probably that?

Re: The health benefits of better air

#87

Post by exmadscientist » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 5:16 AM UTC

ReactiveJelly wrote: post #70

modeless wrote: post #28

I'm surprised this doesn't mention gas stoves and ovens. Gas is the "high end" option, yet creates totally unnecessary PM2.5 pollution in your home. Children growing up with gas stoves have higher rates of asthma.

> Gas is the "high end" option Few years ago I moved from a little apartment with an electric range to an SFH with gas everything. "Good for you," my gas-enthusiast family said, "now you have a REAL stove" It still takes forever to boil water in a pot. The food tastes the same. I wonder why furnaces have these fancy high-efficiency heat exchangers and stoves don't? Cost? I wouldn't mind going back to electric. I just…

> I wonder why furnaces have these fancy high-efficiency heat exchangers and stoves don't? Cost?

I don't see how a design like that would work for a range. The purpose of a range is to heat small, movable objects (pots) to high temperatures (~500°F) with good responsiveness (= short time constants). The purpose of a furnace or water heater is to heat fluids contained in large spaces or tanks to modest temperatures (~100°F) with very limited responsiveness (= long time constants).

The heat exchanger really helps the case of heating a stream of fluid, as that's where the exchange is most useful. The physical and thermal mass of the heat exchanger and flue condenser are both considerable.

I'm not seeing how to make a gas rangetop significantly more thermally responsive without making it no longer practical. For people who can't abide gas for whatever reason, induction units are supposedly excellent these days. (I've never tried one. They can't possibly be worse than an electric smoothtop range, though!)

Re: The health benefits of better air

#88

Post by clairity » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 5:16 AM UTC

nitrogen wrote: post #69

clairity wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, but this way, we could have our (expensive) cake and eat it too. we could free up the above ground streets for electric buses, pedestrians, bikes, malls/parks, and the like, make cities denser/more walkable, remove asphalt/concrete to lower the heat island effect, add trees/plants everywhere, and all sorts of human centered stuff. it’s not so realistic (though the boring company may help with that), but what a v…

Aren't parts of Chicago already kind of like this, with two tiers of streets?

dunno. i know there’s the el for trains and some old streets were paved over and effectively buried 1 story down, but i didn’t think they were in use.

Re: The health benefits of better air

#89

Post by kusha » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 5:17 AM UTC

ahaucnx wrote: post #9

Thank you for this extensive resource on air quality. Yes, it needs to get more attention as it is one of the main drivers of mortality of environmental risks. One thing one has to bear in mind is that often when you optmize your home for low PM (e.g. with air purifiers and fixing of air leackage) your CO2 will get very high causing headaches and reduce cognitive performance. So it always makes sense for indoor air q…

I am extremely interested. Willing to pay you the cost of the PCBs too.

Re: The health benefits of better air

#90

Post by agogdog » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 5:18 AM UTC

acwan93 wrote: post #33

briefcomment wrote: post #14

This is a good list. One other important thing to do if you can help it is to never live near a road. Any road, even infrequently driven on ones. If there's only one car per day on a road, but you live ten feet from it, and occasionally the wind blows the exhaust in your direction, you're breathing that in. Walls don't help. Live at least one mile in a straight line from highways.

I’ve thought about this while cycling to work that I’m inhaling a bunch of exhaust, but with the push to EVs will this no longer be an issue? Dust and particulates that settle on asphalt will still be a problem though.

Maybe we should keep the masks