Live data from Hacker News

Children's stunted lungs show recovery in ultra low emission zone

bbc.com

111–120 of 426 posts

Re: Children's stunted lungs show recovery in ultra low emission zone

#111
post #2

I've needed my inhaler way less since the ULEZ came in. Visiting London used to mean blowing your nose to black snot for a week afterwards, these days living in London it's pretty good.

More anecdata: I've been using my inhaler more since moving to a city with worse air quality than my previous location.

Re: Children's stunted lungs show recovery in ultra low emission zone

#112
post #3

Anecdata I was living very close to a busy highway, and my young daughter was wheazing when she had a cold, we had to give her medicine via a nebulizer. When we moved out to the country more, far away from any major roads, these issues all disappeared within a couple months.

Living very close to busy highways is known to generate poor air quality. I recommend anyone in those locations buy an air purifier for their kids' rooms. I bought a couple reasonably priced HEPA purifiers and I change the filters on schedule. Replacement HEPA filters are very cheap. Also watch out for things that we do indoors that can generate bad air quality. I had a friend who bought a VOC meter and noticed very…

If you’re so inclined, you can build your own air purifier with laser cut panels or 3d printed panels and use a cheap ikea air filter and standard PC fans. All the parts are readily available, and user repairable.

If you pair if with an Apollo AIR-1 you can have home assistant ramp up and down the fans with a PC fan controller based on live readings of PM2.5 in your home. I did this with the help of Claude code.

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6826527

https://makerworld.com/en/models/2470181-nukit-tempest-euro-...

Re: Children's stunted lungs show recovery in ultra low emission zone

#114
post #3

Anecdata I was living very close to a busy highway, and my young daughter was wheazing when she had a cold, we had to give her medicine via a nebulizer. When we moved out to the country more, far away from any major roads, these issues all disappeared within a couple months.

Living very close to busy highways is known to generate poor air quality. I recommend anyone in those locations buy an air purifier for their kids' rooms. I bought a couple reasonably priced HEPA purifiers and I change the filters on schedule. Replacement HEPA filters are very cheap. Also watch out for things that we do indoors that can generate bad air quality. I had a friend who bought a VOC meter and noticed very…

HEPA filters are counterproductive in standard air purifiers. Air purifiers pump their cleaned air directly into the dirty air of the room. It doesn't matter if that cleaned air is extremely clean, because it's immediately mixed with dirty air. What actually matters is how much clean air you produce: the "clean air delivery rate" (CADR).

The more effective the filter the more it restricts airflow. If a filter is only 99% effective instead of 99.99% but allows double the airflow, it provides nearly double the CADR. To benefit from HEPA you need a clean side and dirty side, like in a clean-room setup.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_air_delivery_rate

Re: Children's stunted lungs show recovery in ultra low emission zone

#115
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Living very close to busy highways is known to generate poor air quality. I recommend anyone in those locations buy an air purifier for their kids' rooms. I bought a couple reasonably priced HEPA purifiers and I change the filters on schedule. Replacement HEPA filters are very cheap. Also watch out for things that we do indoors that can generate bad air quality. I had a friend who bought a VOC meter and noticed very…

Agreed, just buy air purifiers with HEPA filters and change them regularly. The main expense is buying one for every room, but it's one of those expenses you wish you had made sooner. DHH is also a fan (pun not intended?): https://world.hey.com/dhh/air-purifiers-are-a-simple-answer-...

Might be better to upgrade your air handler if you're putting HEPA in every room.

Re: Children's stunted lungs show recovery in ultra low emission zone

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Housing development happens at random?

Developers build apartments where they can make money from them, in other words where they can rent them for enough that they'll make back their investment. It's very expensive to build housing, so the only way to make the investment back and have low rental prices is to try to make the building costs as low as possible. A big part of those costs is the price of land.

What's even the point of this comment?

Re: Children's stunted lungs show recovery in ultra low emission zone

#118
While having something done at Stanford's hospitals, at one point I was placed in a room with signs indicating it was on a heavily filtered ventilation system rated for COVID, etc. It was striking to be in an environment with air almost to clean room quality.

Re: Children's stunted lungs show recovery in ultra low emission zone

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a good start, but for VOCs and gases you'll need activated carbon. Those 2-in-1 filters do exist but cost more. And many are scams because they don't have enough volume of activated carbon.

Why would they cut corners? Activated carbon isn’t expensive.

The clue is in your name

Re: Children's stunted lungs show recovery in ultra low emission zone

#120

Using scientists being "stunned" should take the same amount of relevance as someone being "slammed" in article titles.

Smokers don't magically undo the damage they did to their lungs after they stop smoking. Stunned might be hyperbole, but it is at least a little bit surprising.

Hey here is something for you to stun on:

https://old.reddit.com/r/OldSchoolCool/comments/1v73w9s/hydr...

Post reply on HN