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The health benefits of better air

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Re: The health benefits of better air

#201

Post by dheera »

crazygringo wrote: post #130

This article seems to make fantastic jumps from the believable -- mortality from overall air pollution (e.g. in Delhi) to the frankly unbelievable -- your ultrasonic humidifier supposedly reducing your life by nearly an hour each night, or that a daily commute between Newark and NYC takes half a year off your life. According to this logic, anyone who works in the subway should be dying, what, 10 years earlier? Which…

I put together a monster air quality monitor with just about every sensor I could cram into it. Dust sensors, geiger counters, the whole works.

One of the biggest problems I found was indoor CO2 levels. High CO2 levels (much less than dangerous CO2 levels) make you groggy, sleepy, and can induce headaches. I now get notifications to open my windows when CO2 levels pass a certain threshold.

https://dheera.net/projects/airmonitor/

Re: The health benefits of better air

#202

Post by tim333 »

crazygringo wrote: post #130

This article seems to make fantastic jumps from the believable -- mortality from overall air pollution (e.g. in Delhi) to the frankly unbelievable -- your ultrasonic humidifier supposedly reducing your life by nearly an hour each night, or that a daily commute between Newark and NYC takes half a year off your life. According to this logic, anyone who works in the subway should be dying, what, 10 years earlier? Which…

>or that a daily commute between Newark and NYC takes half a year off your life.

>According to this logic, anyone who works in the subway should be dying, what, 10 years earlier?

I don't think that's what they mean. I think it's a lifetime NYC commuter on average should live half a year less than someone out in the country.

Re: The health benefits of better air

#204

Post by lmm »

clairity wrote: post #86
PurpleFoxy wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yeah I would assume it was coming mostly from nearby cars.

Re: The health benefits of better air

#205

Post by colechristensen »

scotty79 wrote: post #197
colechristensen wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an AirVisual Pro, which is quite expensive, but my half finished air quality monitor project had been on the bench for much too long. 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 applianc…

That's weird. I can easily get CO2 levels way below 800 with windows closed, just not completely sealed. And then air purifier can keep PM2.5 levels below 10 on the lowest setting while outside is above 30

What kind of home do you live in? I think a lot of the new construction is sealed very well and there are few leaks besides the actual interfaces.

Re: The health benefits of better air

#206

Post by lmm »

Greek0 wrote: post #91
adamjb wrote: post #8

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…

> 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.

They mean in terms of cost/benefit. Reducing BMI is notoriously difficult.

Re: The health benefits of better air

#207

Post by O_H_E »

crazygringo wrote: post #130

This article seems to make fantastic jumps from the believable -- mortality from overall air pollution (e.g. in Delhi) to the frankly unbelievable -- your ultrasonic humidifier supposedly reducing your life by nearly an hour each night, or that a daily commute between Newark and NYC takes half a year off your life. According to this logic, anyone who works in the subway should be dying, what, 10 years earlier? Which…

I agree with what you are saying, but there is just a small technicality I'd like to correct.

> ...I mean, our body requires minerals -- we're drinking them in our water all day long

Regardless of the minerals in question here, route-of-delivery is a big deal in toxicology, so the line of thinking here is a bit flawed.

Re: The health benefits of better air

#208

Post by scotty79 »

colechristensen wrote: post #151
adrianN wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bubbling air through quicklime slush is an easy way of removing CO2. You can turn the calcium carbonate that forms back into quicklime by applying heat. But it's probably better if you invested into a counterflow heat exchanger for ventilating your home. You can recover a large part of the heating/cooling energy.

The question is how much CO2 can I fix with a reasonably sized apparatus and really I would prefer a continuous system (which is why electrolysis) rather than a batch system. Also I would prefer levels lower than outside, obviously air exchangers will necessarily be worse than just being outside.

You might try using oxygen conentrator with high throughput to concentrate oxygen from outside and pump it into your home.

With small device I could drop CO2 levels to zero in volume of a gargabe bag in few minutes.

But that would give you oxygen rich atmosphere. You'd probably want to add some inert gas to that. Nitrogen preferably. Are there nitrogen concentrators?

Also all of that is probably really dangerous because human body doesn't detect oxygen level, just CO2 level. So you might easily pass out and suffocate without any warning if your oxygen supply unit get damaged but your nitrogen supply unit doesn't.

Re: The health benefits of better air

#209

Post by Eric_WVGG »

crazygringo wrote: post #130

This article seems to make fantastic jumps from the believable -- mortality from overall air pollution (e.g. in Delhi) to the frankly unbelievable -- your ultrasonic humidifier supposedly reducing your life by nearly an hour each night, or that a daily commute between Newark and NYC takes half a year off your life. According to this logic, anyone who works in the subway should be dying, what, 10 years earlier? Which…

I think the particular bit about the subway may be informed by very recent news that the air pollution in the New York subway stations is far in excess of what anyone had inspected.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/10/subway-a...

As for actual subway workers… I mean it’s not exactly a coal mine, but I would be pretty surprised if their mortality wasn’t at least somewhat measurably lower than, say, that of shepherds.

Re: The health benefits of better air

#210

Post by derriz »

colechristensen wrote: post #150
fifteenforty wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are describing an anaesthesia circle breathing system, otherwise known as a rebreather scuba set. :-) You would need to consider the occupant oxygen consumption. A typical human respiratory quotient is 0.8 (0.8 mole of CO2 produced for every 1 mole of O2 consumed). You’ll get a net inward movement of gas into house all things being considered. Anyway, don’t do if. If you do it ‘right’ the argon will slowly build…

Oh I'm not interested in hermetically sealing my apartment, there are no worries of normally constructed buildings being able to withstand a meaningful difference in oxygen pressure between inside and outside. CO2 pressure though can easily be increased by a large factor (5x is easy) and maintained with humans inside and closed doors and windows. PM2.5 is easy to maintain with HEPA filters. CO2 is not easy to maintai…

Don’t those requirements conflict? Maintaining a partial pressure difference between inside and out for CO2 but simultaneously preventing a partial pressure difference in O2? I guess with a large enough scrubber running constantly it might work but it will be highly inefficient - a bit like running AC at full blast with open windows.
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