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Permeable materials in homes act as sponges for harmful chemicals: study

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Re: Permeable materials in homes act as sponges for harmful chemicals: study

#81

Post by IncreasePosts »

modeless wrote: post #76
crazygringo wrote: post #3

The more we study it, the more we learn how harmful the air inside our homes is. That's why fresh air is key. Crack a window or two open. Buy an air monitor that monitors CO2 (good proxy for overall freshness), VOCs (sometimes these build up much faster than CO2), and PM2.5. If CO2 or VOCs are high, open windows more. If PM2.5 is high and coming from outdoors, turn on an air filter. Yes, this means your heating and c…

Every home should have a heat recovery ventilation system. It gives you fresh outside air in the whole home, but filtered to remove PM2.5 and without the inefficiency.

Many new builds will, especially in places with required efficiency standards, but the average house in the US is 40 years old. And leaky as hell.

Re: Permeable materials in homes act as sponges for harmful chemicals: study

#82

Post by imp0cat »

buckle8017 wrote: post #77
Night_Thastus wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is there are a lot of effectively 'fake' CO2 monitors. They can't monitor CO2, they only monitor something else and work backwards to estimate CO2 levels. The cheapest real ones I've found are on the order of ~$150

Unless your CO2 monitor has purge gas to calibrate it's going to underestimate indoor CO2. They all assume that they will be exposed to atmospheric concentrations of CO2 at least once a week.

In their defense, they usually mention this requirement in the manual.

Re: Permeable materials in homes act as sponges for harmful chemicals: study

#83

Post by lupusreal »

crazygringo wrote: post #3

The more we study it, the more we learn how harmful the air inside our homes is. That's why fresh air is key. Crack a window or two open. Buy an air monitor that monitors CO2 (good proxy for overall freshness), VOCs (sometimes these build up much faster than CO2), and PM2.5. If CO2 or VOCs are high, open windows more. If PM2.5 is high and coming from outdoors, turn on an air filter. Yes, this means your heating and c…

> Yes, this means your heating and cooling bill will be a bit higher.

Not even necessarily. People these days are accustomed to keeping their homes at comfortable T-shirt temps even in the dead of winter, but if you dress appropriately for the season you can drop your indoor temperatures 20F or more from what people normally set the thermostat to while still maintaining a safe margin to keep your pipes from freezing.

Re: Permeable materials in homes act as sponges for harmful chemicals: study

#84

Post by lupusreal »

egman_ekki wrote: post #48
capitol_ wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you need it to be cooler than 18c?

I think they want more than 18c. 18c is pretty cold to sit in for a prolonged time.

At 18C I wouldn't even put on a sweater. People need to stop being so wimpy. 10C is a good target temperature during the winter.

Re: Permeable materials in homes act as sponges for harmful chemicals: study

#85

Post by jrmg »

Etheryte wrote: post #8
crazygringo wrote: post #3

The more we study it, the more we learn how harmful the air inside our homes is. That's why fresh air is key. Crack a window or two open. Buy an air monitor that monitors CO2 (good proxy for overall freshness), VOCs (sometimes these build up much faster than CO2), and PM2.5. If CO2 or VOCs are high, open windows more. If PM2.5 is high and coming from outdoors, turn on an air filter. Yes, this means your heating and c…

This is advice that gets thrown around a lot, but it's missing the important bit of how to buy a meter that's both reasonably accurate and affordable. There are countless articles online showing how widely commonly sold meters vary in their readings. What's more, paying more often does not mean you'll get a more accurate reading. Sure, there's diminish returns and past a certain point it doesn't matter, but many mete…

I tried to do this (buy an affordable priced, reasonably accurate meter) and, after probably after reading the same articles as you, reached the conclusion that there are no meters that are accurate and affordable.

So many seem to rely on automatic ‘calibration’ - which just seems to consist of “let’s assume the lowest sensor readings of the last while correlate to baseline atmospheric CO2”.

For a meter that’s never taken outside, this is obviously going to mean it’s reading too low all the time after a few ‘calibration’ cycles. And, worse, it's likely to be more wrong in less well ventilated spaces.

Re: Permeable materials in homes act as sponges for harmful chemicals: study

#86

Post by [deleted] »

hxorr wrote: post #79

This is why your plastic ketchup bottle still smells like ketchup after washing it multiple times - at a microscopic level, plastics essentially look like uncooked ramen/instant noodles, basically a big tangle of polymer chains which act like a sponge. Now, consider what happens when you wash that plastic with a cocktail of chemicals in your dishwasher... Obviously very hard/dense plastics (melamine comes to mind) ar…

[deleted]

Re: Permeable materials in homes act as sponges for harmful chemicals: study

#87

Post by imp0cat »

amluto wrote: post #54
hylaride wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's a classic research paper. They're essentially only supposed to report findings. If you live in a house with central HVAC, a decent, regularly replaced filter will help a lot (make sure to only use full blown HEPPA filters if your furnace supports it otherwise you'll have all sorts of airflow issues). Otherwise you can buy air purifiers. The study measured smoke (cigarette and wildfire) as well as insectici…

The study is about VOCs. You’ll want a carbon filter, as even a HEPA filter won’t do much. Also, don’t put a HEPA filler in your HVAC return — not only is it unhelpful overkill, it will have excessive static pressure drop, thus wasting power, increasing noise, reducing airflow, and potentially damaging the blower. Use an appropriate filter in the MERV 13-16 range.

Carbon filters in air purifiers are a pain. They do work, but due to their smaller volumes they tend to get full quite fast and require frequent replacements.

If you're considering one, make sure to get an air purifies where the carbon filter can be changed independently from the main filter.

Re: Permeable materials in homes act as sponges for harmful chemicals: study

#88

Post by ludicrousdispla »

Etheryte wrote: post #8
crazygringo wrote: post #3

The more we study it, the more we learn how harmful the air inside our homes is. That's why fresh air is key. Crack a window or two open. Buy an air monitor that monitors CO2 (good proxy for overall freshness), VOCs (sometimes these build up much faster than CO2), and PM2.5. If CO2 or VOCs are high, open windows more. If PM2.5 is high and coming from outdoors, turn on an air filter. Yes, this means your heating and c…

This is advice that gets thrown around a lot, but it's missing the important bit of how to buy a meter that's both reasonably accurate and affordable. There are countless articles online showing how widely commonly sold meters vary in their readings. What's more, paying more often does not mean you'll get a more accurate reading. Sure, there's diminish returns and past a certain point it doesn't matter, but many mete…

I have an "INKBIRD WiFi Indoor Air Quality Monitor" (INK-CO2W) and consider it useful and reliable for my purposes.

You calibrate it by setting it outside for a bit to establish the baseline and then bring it inside. The detected CO2 level noticeably tracks with the number of people in the living room in which it is located and whether outside air is being pulled in, either due to the furnace or having multiple windows open.

We do not use the app, so I can't comment on that. And my only complaint is that it has to be plugged in otherwise it runs out of power in an hour or two.

Re: Permeable materials in homes act as sponges for harmful chemicals: study

#89

Post by doubled112 »

mschuster91 wrote: post #38

> The findings suggest that regular ventilation alone may be insufficient to remove many indoor contaminants. Physical cleaning activities such as vacuuming, mopping and dusting are necessary to effectively remove compounds with high partition coefficients from surface reservoirs. Yup. Indoor smoker homes are the worst because cleaning alone is often not enough. Cheap landlords just slap a coat of paint on to hide th…

This sounds similar to what happens in cars that have been smoked in, but there are even more soft surfaces, nooks and crannies in a car.

Smaller space, but easier to get fresh air into.

Re: Permeable materials in homes act as sponges for harmful chemicals: study

#90

Post by buckle8017 »

imp0cat wrote: post #82
buckle8017 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless your CO2 monitor has purge gas to calibrate it's going to underestimate indoor CO2. They all assume that they will be exposed to atmospheric concentrations of CO2 at least once a week.

In their defense, they usually mention this requirement in the manual.

Sure but do you take your CO2 meter for a walk?
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