101–110 of 471 posts
Unless the author is not only a scientist but a really good one, I cannot personally believe any of this material. If particles were as essential to health as claimed, smokers would have a much much shorter life expectancy.
The biggest pitfall I see with this is we’re extrapolating from large doses of air pollution to very tiny ones. Clearly we have enough evidence to say that smoking a pack a day or living in a smog-filled city will cut years off your life. But we would need truly gigantic samples to show that blowing birthday candles or broiling fish once a week will cut weeks off your life. Instead these conclusions are being derived…
Related: https://samharris.org/the-fireplace-delusion/
LOL this happens whenever I talk about this issue with people here in Poland. Part of it is their family is here, it's hard to immigrate, deep down they know it is a problem. It was upsetting to tell my Polish wife that we need to move out of Poland and to scary USA but... she agreed with me and we're doing it. For us, the risk of death is far higher here with all the smoke. Even the California wildfires are relatively harmless in comparison, we get that every year in Poland and no one cares, at least in Calfornia everyone recognizes that it's a problem and people stay at home.
But here, wood burning(or even coal burning), is a part of the culture, giving warm fuzzy memories at granny's house burning horrid things in the furnace for others to enjoy.
How is it possible to separate DALYs lost from high BMI from DALYs lost from low vegetables and/or low physical activity? The author never fully explains the methodology behind the graph.
I don't understand how the author arrives at the conclusion that "[air quality] is often the most effective health intervention, period". How do you take that away from the plots? If you're in the US my prime take-away would be to keep your BMI in check. The first graph shows ~2 deaths per 1000 people per year. Surely more than 2 persons/1000/year die in those countries. What are the causes for the other ~10-15 death…
BMI reductions are also notoriously difficult, while many of the mitigations listed in the article are low effort and relatively low cost. You could plausibly include this in your comparison of effectiveness.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/03/indoor-p... > The science is clear: Indoor vegetation doesn’t significantly remove pollutants from the air
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 think the point is control. Induction stoves are pretty good for dumping watts into water. However, it's very hard to get a good mid-range temperature. Gas makes it really straightforward to get something cooking at exactly the heat you want.
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 have windows open all the time, air conditioning on too often, and dehumidifiers and HEPA filters as well. It is not efficient or particularly environmentally friendly... but I want a CO2 level My next half baked idea is figuring out a way to have a sealed home and an appliance (or messy bench-top device) to remove CO2 from the room continuously and exhale outside -- current ideas revolve around using a carbonate (lithium? sodium?) in water in an electrolysis cell and an aquarium bubbler to collect CO2 and expel it outside. The best I've been able to accomplish so far is baking CO2 out of baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) and sealing it in about a cubic foot container and achieving ~300 ppm CO2 (lower than outside which is ~400-450).
A simple 20 x 20 Box fan with a furnace HEPA filter placed against it (just turn on fan and place filter behind it) will do wonders for your indoor air quality. The 3M 2200 Series Filtrete Filters are amazing. You also always want to cook with the Hood Fan going. The particulate that is created during cooking is so small it can pass through the lungs into your blood stream causing havoc.
How long do the filters last?
The prefilter is typically a lot cheaper and is replaced more often. Even some non-woven filter fabric (like that used in vacuum cleaner filters) will dramatically increase the HEPA filter life, is super cheap, and can be washed for reuse.
My purifiers use an F8 prefilter and H13 HEPA filter, and the HEPA filter will last about 2 years.
Filter class info here: