The health benefits of better air • Hacker News Board

Re: The health benefits of better air

#391

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 1:05 PM UTC

steventharlow wrote: post #281

darkwater wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: The health benefits of better air

#392

Post by KMag » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 1:12 PM UTC

darkerside wrote: post #375

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.

Besides melanomas which are relatively rare, most skin cancers actually carry a net mortality benefit because of the association with being outside.

That's super interesting!

Re: The health benefits of better air

#393

Post by Symmetry » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 1:14 PM UTC

ehnto wrote: post #214

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, tha…

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 sure their skin cancer morbidity is higher but the studies I've seen seem to show that sun exposure overall correlates with lower mortality and morbidity overall. There may be confounders like exercise at play but shepherds are probably getting more than most subway workers.

Re: The health benefits of better air

#394

Post by mensetmanusman » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 1:15 PM UTC

We recommend to our new parent friends that they get a room air purifier for their new babies.

It simultaneously generates white noise and the accompanying deep bass rumble that is calming like a car ride, and it gives peace of mind knowing that they spend a third of their life with ultra clean air.

https://www.consumerreports.org/products/air-purifiers-29549...

This one has lasted almost a decade of continuous night time usage. It’s amazing how dirty the air is when you see it.

Re: The health benefits of better air

#395

Post by Symmetry » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 1:15 PM UTC

HPsquared wrote: post #276

tda wrote: 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

Not all particles are equally toxic. If I had to guess, the smoke from a recently-extinguished candle is probably condensed wax vapor rather than PAHs and heavy metals.

I don't think condensed wax vapor has looks like the dark smoke that comes off a recently extinguished candle. I'm pretty sure it's carbon compounds from the wick.

Re: The health benefits of better air

#396

Post by KMag » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 1:18 PM UTC

Gravityloss wrote: post #293

londons_explore wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

Is there a fundamental reason why the subway must be like that? I assume it's not as bad in say Hong Kong? Copenhagen metro for example is automated and there's a wall and automatic doors separating the tracks from the platform. I assume it's quite clean.

Having lived in Manhattan for 7 years, and Hong Kong for 9, I'm pretty sure the air quality inside the Hong Kong MTR is better than the NYC subway. Air in the stations in Hong Kong is air conditioned and filtered. Not that feeling is the best measure, but the feeling of the air in a lot of the NYC stations is just not great.

Outdoor air quality in Hong Kong was pretty rough a few years on either side of 2014, but it has either gotten better lately or I've stopped noticing the bad days.

Re: The health benefits of better air

#397

Post by Symmetry » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 1:18 PM UTC

sharken wrote: post #289

Mauricebranagh wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BMI is known as a very bad measure

So what is a better measure ?

Use height to the 2.5th power as the denominator rather than height squared.

Re: The health benefits of better air

#398

Post by codingdave » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 1:20 PM UTC

phantom_oracle wrote: post #336

Micro-managing your life to this extent is probably why all dystopian books/movies involve some well-meaning technical person who thinks we should be doing XYZ to prolong our lives. While these things may (anecdotally) prolong your life, does anybody really want to be 102 and having to be nursed for all the basic needs like bathing yourself? Combine this article with the many(many) others that tell you how to micro-m…

I'm not understanding why you feel this is micro-management. People constantly "micro-manage" their life in far more detailed ways than this - what you eat, what you wear, where you sit, all kinds of trivial decisions made minute-by-minute as you live. Being aware of one more environmental factor and making some decisions based on it hardly feels like a huge additional burden on my life.

Re: The health benefits of better air

#399

Post by Loughla » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 1:24 PM UTC

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #381

parsimo2010 wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think my follow on question would be which is better- a scented candle or a scented plug in like an Air Wick or Glade? Or are they similar and the only good choice is to have no perfumes floating in the air? I’ll gladly switch systems if there is a difference but I’d like to have something to make my house smell better.

Depends on your risk tolerance. Candle emissions have a low but known impact on your health. Plug in air fresheners don't have a known impact but they have god knows what chemicals in them. Maybe you'll get cancer at 60, maybe it would take three lifetimes of exposure to have any effect.

I genuinely can't be convinced there are people alive today that the risk of one scented candle in the home and/or plug in air fresheners are higher than the background danger of auto, industry, and just general pollution. This seems like an anxiety in search of a problem, or am I very underestimating it?

It just seems like the road in front of my house is probably more of a problem than my vanilla candle.

Re: The health benefits of better air

#400

Post by patentatt » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 1:28 PM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #286

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...

This. (Warning: light-weight argument incoming, but it’s intriguing) Is anyone seriously looking into this? How do we know that (for example) subway workers don’t have shorter lifespans that can’t be accounted for any other way? Just taking a superficial, devils-advocate stance makes me wonder what other broad correlations may exist that aren’t known just because they’re not being investigated rigorously? In some ways this also intersects with the bias against publishing negative results - what if a good study of this has been done but wasn’t published because it wasn’t headline-grabbing?