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The health benefits of better air

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Re: The health benefits of better air

#281

Post by steventharlow »

darkwater wrote: post #239
ehnto wrote: 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.

Evolution (and survival) only cares about if you survive to reproduce. So human evolution (and survival) matters only until 14-40, and humans aren't dying of skin cancer at exceedingly large numbers at those ages.

If we pushed back the reproductive age we'd eventually evolve to live longer (though would have more people dying without reproducing first). This experiment has been successfully shown in fruit flies.

Re: The health benefits of better air

#282

Post by Out_of_Characte »

tolmasky wrote: post #198
WillPostForFood wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extinguish candles with a lid. If you are worrying about the method by which you extinguish a candle, worrying is what's going to shorten your life, not the candle.

I don’t think it’s generating anxiety, just creating a habit. Like washing your hands with soap after you go to the bathroom. Once upon a time that sentence might generate the response “if you’re worrying about how you wash your hands, then the worrying is what’s going to kill you!” (in actuality it was worse, the suggestion that a surgeon should wash his hands before surgery was considered offensive). But today it’s…

Anyone whose health can be reasonably influenced by how you put out a candle has not been born yet. Everyone else has to deal with jobs and living circumstances that requires one to be inside all day, work strange hours, be outside in the sun all day, inhale fine dust from any kind of road nearby. There is a near endless list of similar/worse risk factors at play in one's life. Even though these risks might be provable in their damage to your functioning and there might be reasonable solutions to them, implementing them will still be insignificant. Just like how you should avoid apples because at least apples have killed people.

Re: The health benefits of better air

#283

Post by magicalhippo »

scotty79 wrote: post #217
AppleCandy wrote: post #192

Laundry and clothes by far creates the most dust and particles in my home, probably yours too. At night, with the lights off and the room dark, turn on your phone LED pointed at the ceiling. Look closely at the air just above the light, you'll see tiny little material threads and speckles. I do not like the idea of constantly breathing that in. I've used an expensive HEPA air filter in my room and did some testing, l…

I think large, visible particles are not as bad as the small ones like PM10, PM2.5, PM1

I had a lot of issues with an allergic-like reaction to my old bedroom when temporarily moving back to my parent's house while switching apartments. It was a bit dusty there, but visibly it didn't look too bad.

I had noticed this before while crashing there every now and then, but hadn't thought much of it. But since I had to stay there for a while I had to do something.

So I bought an air purifier with HEPA filter and let it work at full blast while I was at work. The first few days had a very noticeable improvement, and after five days I had no issues at all anymore.

Re: The health benefits of better air

#284

Post by bob1029 »

pbourke wrote: post #120
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.

This is the type of delightfully practical advice that Keeps me returning to HN.

I was thinking the same thing. All this time I had been living near a busy thoroughfare because I assumed it was good for me. I'll have my realtor on the phone this afternoon. How bad could the Texas market be?

Re: The health benefits of better air

#285

Post by ehnto »

darkwater wrote: post #239
ehnto wrote: 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.

I may be overly cautious given where I live has an 11+/Extreme UV rating all year round.

Though I do want to point out that clothing doesn't protect against UV as much as you might think, and a sunburn or lack thereof doesn't tell you all that much about your UV exposure for the day. You could have exceeded your healthy exposure for the day without getting a sunburn.

Re: The health benefits of better air

#286

Post by londons_explore »

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…

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

From my ad-hoc survey of subway driver friends, this seems about true... Most die in their late 60's in a country where most people make it to 70/80.

Obviously the fact their job involves sitting in a chair all day doesn't help things...

Re: The health benefits of better air

#287

Post by Mauricebranagh »

erosenbe0 wrote: post #154
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…

Statistical evidence for high BMI's effect on quality of life and morbidity is more compelling, at least in the developed world. Author's thesis does stand insofar as AQ often being overlooked as a causative agent behind cardiovascular disease.

BMI is known as a very bad measure

Re: The health benefits of better air

#288

Post by stared »

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…

When it comes to ultrasonic humidifiers, they do generate a lot of PM 2.5, see:

https://blog.getawair.com/awair-investigates-how-your-humidi...

It is NOT certain that these particles are as bad as ones from dust or combustion. All in all, when small droplets evaporate, what remains is water-soluble salts, rather than anything more reactive or harder to remove, see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3922954/ as mentioned in https://learn.kaiterra.com/en/air-academy/humidifiers-cause-...:

"In a study on mice, researchers discovered that inhaling the dust from ultrasonic purifiers produces a cellular response, but this response lacks the inflammation and damage associated with other forms of particulate matter."

Myself, I got shocked when my air purifier suddenly started showing a huge amount of pollution (and yes, my eyes turned red). Only afterwards, I checked it was exactly because of my freshly-bought ultrasonic air purifier. Now I have an evaporative one - not as fast, not as spectacular, but better.

Re: The health benefits of better air

#289

Post by sharken »

Mauricebranagh wrote: post #287
erosenbe0 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Statistical evidence for high BMI's effect on quality of life and morbidity is more compelling, at least in the developed world. Author's thesis does stand insofar as AQ often being overlooked as a causative agent behind cardiovascular disease.

BMI is known as a very bad measure

So what is a better measure ?

Re: The health benefits of better air

#290

Post by billfruit »

hannob wrote: post #251
WillPostForFood wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extinguish candles with a lid. If you are worrying about the method by which you extinguish a candle, worrying is what's going to shorten your life, not the candle.

My first thought on the candles was: If you're worried about paritculate emissions and air quality in your flat then maybe just don't burn anything in your flat. I haven't researched that, but it always seemed entirely obvious to me that candles aren't exactly healthy in terms of air quality.

That is also one of the arguments for choosing induction over gas, since it removes combustion from the kitchen.
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