Live data from Hacker News

The health benefits of better air

dynomight.net

241–250 of 471 posts

Re: The health benefits of better air

#241
post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a cheap pm10 meter and ran it continuously for a few weeks. Next too cooking meat the other activity that stood out was blowing out the birthday candles. The pm10 rose to 300 and only was backs to healthy levels (below 50) several hours later. I was as surprised as you are. Next time I'll definitely open a window

How often do you blow out birthday candles?

At least once a year

Re: The health benefits of better air

#242

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…

> According to this logic, anyone who works in the subway should be dying, what, 10 years earlier? Which is obviously not happening. Why is this obvious?

Because you would see all the time commercials on tv letting you know that if you, or a late loved one, worked in the subway you may be entitled to financial compensation.

Re: The health benefits of better air

#243
post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to point out how why this is a fairly nuanced topic, a shepherd may be breathing clean air but they're also exposed to UV radiation all day. They may have a higher morbidity due to increased skin cancer rates.

I'm no way an expert on the matter but by pure logic it's still amazes me how we survived (and evolved!) as a species for thousand of years without almost no shelter from direct sunlight and yet now (too much) sunlight exposure is seen as a cause of death. I know we lost almost all the body hair we used to have but still, we usually wear clothes when under the sun.

Shepherds (like all folks) wear and wore clothes, long sleeves and often hats also in the summer. Also if skin is exposed to sun regularly, often, its much less sensitive compared to usual office worker seeing almost no sunlight and then having 2 weeks of mega exposure and sunburns on vacation.

Re: The health benefits of better air

#244
post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to point out how why this is a fairly nuanced topic, a shepherd may be breathing clean air but they're also exposed to UV radiation all day. They may have a higher morbidity due to increased skin cancer rates.

I'm no way an expert on the matter but by pure logic it's still amazes me how we survived (and evolved!) as a species for thousand of years without almost no shelter from direct sunlight and yet now (too much) sunlight exposure is seen as a cause of death. I know we lost almost all the body hair we used to have but still, we usually wear clothes when under the sun.

According to my naive knowledge:

1. We have more ozone holes now.

2. We weren't constantly in direct contact with sunlight. If you move past very early stages, we had shelter in forests, caves, tents, igloos.

3. When we were in direct contact with sunlight, we had a darker skin, which is more resilient to that.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

Re: The health benefits of better air

#245
post #4

Related: https://samharris.org/the-fireplace-delusion/

> I have discovered that when I make this case, even to highly intelligent and health-conscious men and women, a psychological truth quickly becomes as visible as a pair of clenched fists: They do not want to believe any of it. 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…

I think some people are so afraid of dangers to their health that they are even afraid to acknowledge them. I think I've seen a lot of this during the pandemic. When you try make people acknowledge the dangers they are facing they are going to panick and defend their peace of mind furiously.

Anyways, good luck in the US. Avoid getting shot, having a pool, drinking sugared water instead of water, any medical issue and getting on the bad side of the law in any way. ;-)

Re: The health benefits of better air

#246
I'm dubious that water soluble 'particles' from water hardness are a major concern. The meters can just distinguish sizes, but I expect that particles of a given size can radically differ in how harmful they are if nothing else based just on the body's ability to clear them.

Re: The health benefits of better air

#247

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…

Oh I read their allegedly "humidifiers kill" snippet, so tl;dr:

> but ultrasonic humidifiers produce huge numbers of particles. They turn any minerals in the water become airborne particles. got the following steady-state increases over background levels.

> Mineral water: ~265

> Tap water (Seoul): ~260

> Purified water: ~50

> Distilled water: ~0

So what you mean is that if I follow the instructions on the manual and use distilled (or at least purified water) for mineral and biological reasons, the issue is smaller to non-existent?

Re: The health benefits of better air

#248

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…

As for humidifiers, specifically ultrasonic ones - we bought one for our baby, but immediately with it also the best water purifier we could find (Zero water) that produces demineralized water practically absent from other molecules than H2O. There is no dust the next morning on the floor (or anywhere), there is no buildup of calc in the machine.

I do believe that breathing that fine dust isn't very healthy long term, but that article outright lies about using it = taking 50 minutes out of every 1440 minutes of everybody's lives.

We would see this effect in dusty (ie Saharan) regions already, there are hundreds of millions of people living in those conditions. What is dust if not small particles of stones and organic compounds flying around.

Re: The health benefits of better air

#249

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 found that distilled water does not increase PM0.5 when I run an ultrasonic humidifier, but filtered water causes huge particulate spikes.

I've got an ultrasonic humidifier. I found that running it for a few hours with Brita filtered water made my whole room full of white dust. So I started using only distilled water. Since getting distilled water means I have to walk a few blocks and refill a 10 liter container every two days, I'll probably not buy an ultrasonic humidifier in the future.

Re: The health benefits of better air

#250

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…

Noise dampening is still an issue. Where I'm living, the whole flat is subject to resonance, when old buses drive by. It's like living inside the throat of a bass vocalist. That, and I hear every laugh a child has outside, even though I'm on 7th floor (8th, if you count like USA-ians do). It's terrible.
Post reply on HN