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The health benefits of better air

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Re: The health benefits of better air

#411

Post by bloke_zero »

Loughla wrote: post #399
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The thing is that wind and sheer volume of air tend to mitigate the pollution but in the home the air can stay static.

Re: The health benefits of better air

#412

Post by TheCoelacanth »

airhead969 wrote: post #328
Mauricebranagh wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in NYC and the US in general having better health care especially for poorer workers will have much more of an effect.

Completely untrue. The US spends the most per capita and gets worse outcomes than other countries. This fact was even highlighted in Michael Moore's Where To Invade Next?

Worse than many countries, but certainly not worse than India or Indonesia that the US was being compared to in this article.

Re: The health benefits of better air

#413

Post by jonnycomputer »

nitrogen wrote: post #71
jonnycomputer wrote: post #11

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.

Makes me glad that I got an evaporative one then. At the time I was mostly thinking that the ultrasonic one would bother my dog.

Re: The health benefits of better air

#414

Post by MengerSponge »

I have a Dylos air quality monitor. It's a great combination of sensitivity and price, and it's led me to dramatically change my habits.

I no longer simmer things with my gas range all day (I use an induction cooker instead). I stopped using any candles/incense. I run a HEPA filter in my bedroom 24/7, and I always keep that door shut.

Re: The health benefits of better air

#415

Post by kiliantics »

emptybits wrote: post #92

EVs reduce tailpipe exhaust near roads but it's worth noting that brake abrasion dust isn't going away anytime soon and it's considered very bad to breathe, possibly in the same league as diesel emission particles.[1] I guess regenerative braking on an EV reduces this somewhat. Tire dust is also concerning.[2] [1] https://academic.oup.com/metallomics/article/12/3/371/595624... [2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2264…

Another reason why we should not be making this big push for EVs but instead try to shift our infrastructure away from personal vehicles and towards mass transit and micromobility.

EVs will still make this picture look the same and are thus inherently an inefficient form of transport:

https://urbanist.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83454714d69e2017d3c37d8...

Re: The health benefits of better air

#416

Post by crazygringo »

quietbritishjim wrote: post #352
dcolkitt wrote: post #98

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…

Sorry for the pendantry: it sounds like you mean linear interpolation, rather than extrapolation. Extrapolation is where you project outside the range of previously collected data, and is particularly likely to result in false conclusions. Interpolation is where you estimate a value inside the range of collected data from points around it, and is usually a lot less dangerous. But I agree with your point that, in this…

But the article is extrapolating, not interpolating.

Extrapolation is when you're extending to outside of the measured data range. In this case, the measurements were all of large values, and it's extrapolating (linearly) to small values. Just because the values being extrapolated to are smaller, rather than larger, doesn't make it interpolation.

Which is precisely why this has the risk of false conclusions, like you say.

Re: The health benefits of better air

#417

Post by kiliantics »

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…

Yes, if anything, we should be macro-managing. The environmental air quality that we incur on ourselves is the largest factor we will have to deal with in life, why not start there? Why are we tolerating a society predicated on burning fuel to push two tonnes of steel around for almost any kind of human travel when there are so many cleaner alternatives?

Re: The health benefits of better air

#418

Post by scotty79 »

magicalhippo wrote: post #283
scotty79 wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

It's weird that people get alergic to stuff they grew up with.

I grew up with cats. Never had a problem with them. My last cat died when I was 21. I moved out. I didn't have any contact with a cat for about 4 years. Bam, now I'm alergic to cats.

Air purifier does wonderful thing for people with allergies. Thanks to it I could pretty much stayed off meds last year.

Re: The health benefits of better air

#419

Post by scotty79 »

donny2018 wrote: post #277
scotty79 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 beca…

We are still talking about home... on planet Earth, right?

Of course. :-) The whole idea is based onthat ouside of the fact that there's plenty of oxygen for the concentrator to concentrate.

Re: The health benefits of better air

#420

Post by refurb »

stared wrote: post #288
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/…

Are these humidifier particles bad at all? What does “cellular response” mean? Typically combustion particles are bad because they contain carcinogens and PM2.5 can deposit deep in the lungs.

This seems like a “PM2.5 bad no matter the source” theory which isn’t supported at all.

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