Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

First clean water, now clean air

finmoorhouse.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 149 posts

Re: First clean water, now clean air

#81

Post by [deleted] »

mypastself wrote: post #3
sergioisidoro wrote: post #2

I bought a CO2 monitor, and although the effects of CO2 in cognition and energy levels are debatable[1], it shocked me and raised awareness to how poor my indoor ventilation is. We live in a small apartment, and just being 30 min with 2 people in the room raises the CO2 ppm from 400 to >1000. Opening a window quickly lowers it. Never-mind doing some light activity like yoga or similar. So if we want to do something,…

Not to hijack your thread, but I wonder if anyone here’s built their own Raspberry/Arduino CO2 monitor? Which (reliable) sensors did you use? Did you find it more affordable than purchasing a monitor, especially if you already had unused microcontrollers lying around the house?

[deleted]

Re: First clean water, now clean air

#82

Post by Mvandenbergh »

makomk wrote: post #27
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #16

It doesn't take away from the general thrust of the post but it's interesting that lack of quality sewage treatment leading to it being dumped into rivers is thought to be a key issue in the current British council voting: Local elections 2023: How sewage topped the political agenda https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-65190097

The Victorian-era sewage systems described in this article are actually one of the key reasons that sewage is ending up in rivers and the sea in the first place. Notice how they worked: sewage was collected, pumped, and dumped downstream of London. It was not treated. Most of the UK's sewage treatment is retrofitted to sewage systems that were never designed to have it. This causes various problems, the main one bein…

To be fair, while all of those things are true (and in fact the poor state of many rivers is more due to farming and to fully consented but still high-nitrate effluents from waste water treatment than to CSOs) the industry has really not even bothered to defend itself here. It's like they're just cowed by the criticism.

Re: First clean water, now clean air

#83

Post by rcme »

sergioisidoro wrote: post #2

I bought a CO2 monitor, and although the effects of CO2 in cognition and energy levels are debatable[1], it shocked me and raised awareness to how poor my indoor ventilation is. We live in a small apartment, and just being 30 min with 2 people in the room raises the CO2 ppm from 400 to >1000. Opening a window quickly lowers it. Never-mind doing some light activity like yoga or similar. So if we want to do something,…

I think the first step would be to buy a second monitor, ideally from a different manufacturer, and verify that your readings are actually correct. My experience is that cheap monitors are basically random.

Re: First clean water, now clean air

#84

Post by Mvandenbergh »

brianmcc wrote: post #31
makomk wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Victorian-era sewage systems described in this article are actually one of the key reasons that sewage is ending up in rivers and the sea in the first place. Notice how they worked: sewage was collected, pumped, and dumped downstream of London. It was not treated. Most of the UK's sewage treatment is retrofitted to sewage systems that were never designed to have it. This causes various problems, the main one bein…

It also seems another Brexit issue - treatment chemicals being that bit harder to bring in: https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/brexit-to-blame-for-u...

Not in practice, no. Companies were provided with a regulatory position statement from the EA that they would not usually be prosecuted if they ran out of treatment chemicals due to something that wasn't their fault. In fact, there never was a shortage due to either Brexit, Covid or a combo and this was never used.

Re: First clean water, now clean air

#85

Post by dylan604 »

bsenftner wrote: post #23
isp wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So if we want to do something, I think the first step is really to get visibility to the problem A sensible first step would be to very visibly display CO₂ monitors in buildings (e.g., throughout office buildings, schools, etc) Once the CO₂ levels become visible, this in itself creates an incentive to improve. Related from UK (2021): "All schools to receive carbon dioxide monitors" - https://www.gov.uk/government/n…

In Japan, it is common to see CO₂ monitor displays outside contained meeting spaces, such as theaters. My wife purchased an Aronet CO₂ monitor, and I took it with me on a business trip last week. The CO₂ while on the flight was in the 3000's range. The CO₂ at my client's office was in the mid 2000's range, as well as the hotel. Opening the hotel window the allowed 2 inches reduces CO₂ to the 600 range in 10 minutes,…

>if the CO₂ is above 1500 I get drowsy, so the degree it is no longer responsible driving a car.

so the old adage of rolling down the window when driving might actually have some factual logic to it. of course, people are only considering that when at the extreme end of trying to stay awake from already driving past safe limits, but it could easily make a long haul trip more bearable by remembering to crack the window at intervals. then again, if you're riding with my buddies, you were already having to crack the windows at intervals, but for other reasons.

Re: First clean water, now clean air

#86

Post by clairity »

fatuna wrote: post #79
clairity wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "although the effects of CO2 in cognition and energy levels are debatable" it's really not debatable. the feeling of stuffiness is a function of many things, but environmentally, it's mostly temperature and humidity (we humans are hot and breathe out lots of humidity). there are no cognitive/energy effects until you get into the 10's of thousand of ppm, as the mechanism of action is competing out oxygen, not some i…

Do you have any sources on this? I'm keen to know more, but googling results in either very dry researchpapers or ads on either co2 meters or air purifiers.

here's a USDA fact sheet summarizing the effects of CO₂ at different concentrations that's more easily digestible than an academic paper: https://www.fsis.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media_file/202...

Re: First clean water, now clean air

#87

Post by dgroshev »

sdfjkl wrote: post #20

The Thames is still very much opaque. Not near-opaque.

It's just silt churned up by high tides. When you're on the river, you can easily see that bits shielded from the turbulent flow, where the silt has a chance to settle down, are crystal clear. You can also see eels, seals, cormorants, kingfishers, seagulls of all kinds, and lots of life generally. It's great.

Re: First clean water, now clean air

#88

Post by switchbak »

endisneigh wrote: post #54
switchbak wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Letting your warm air go directly outside also has a cost. Getting poor air quality for decades also has a cost. Typing more than a one word reply is pretty cheap though.

you're right. things have tradeoffs. the point is that most barely have central AC with vents, let alone an HRV.

Most homes don't have HRVs not only due to cost, but because homes didn't used to be tight enough to require them. We also didn't understand how important fresh air is.

Many homes didn't have AC because a) it was expensive, and b) you used to not need it as much.

And plenty of people can afford these things, cost is not the only consideration nor some magic word to dismiss the tech generally.

Re: First clean water, now clean air

#89

Post by Symmetry »

MontyCarloHall wrote: post #19

If, hypothetically, we dramatically reduced the prevalence of airborne disease, what would the effect on our immune systems be? Some hypothesize that living in too sterile an environment leads to autoimmune diseases, since the immune system is calibrated to a certain baseline level of activity, and will turn on the body if this level is not met by external pathogens.

Our hunter gatherer ancestors living in bands suffered from drastically fewer respiratory diseases than we do, you need a large connected population for something like the flu to survive in a human population in the long term. The issue with sterile environments is about the lack of random bacteria, not human adapted pathogens.

Re: First clean water, now clean air

#90

Post by steviedotboston »

I don't think the clear water and clear air analogy works very well. They seem to be very different cases. Keeping clean and dirty water separate is trivial and requires no more advanced technology than plumbing. Keeping clean and "dirty" air separate is impossible. We will always breathe air that includes pathogens. That isn't to say there should be efforts to improve air quality, but I think a lot of times analogies like this oversimplify things. It's easy to eradicate cholera through cleanliness and modern plumbing, but we will never eradicate airborne viruses through air filters and masks.
Post reply on HN