buildings have an outsized impact on our health

September 7, 2024 11:12 AM

The Pivotal Importance of Air Quality and Ventilation (podcast with transcript). See also environmental engineering professor Linsey Marr's work, who was inspired to focus on bioaerosols after their kid came home with an awful cold. Joseph G Allen's paper Recommitting to Ventilation Standards for Healthy Indoor Air Quality
posted by spamandkimchi (15 comments total)

Ah forgot to include environmental engineering professor Shelly Miller, who co-authored a study on ventilation in schools with Allen. Here's a related post:

Air cleaners* are helpful as an added supplement in buildings that are unable to provide high enough clean (virus-free) air to maintain low aerosol concentrations, which is typically accomplished by supplying some combination of outside air and high-efficiency-particle filtered air. It is best to learn a little about air cleaners before you go out and purchase one (you could but you might be wasting your money). You could end up spending hundreds of dollars on an air cleaner that moves little or no air and generates ozone. Like what happened here with the Sharper Image’s Ionic Breeze (we also tested this air cleaner in this paper and found it did nothing really).

*Miller writes: Air cleaners (please don’t call them air purifiers, we can’t ever purify the air – what does that even mean…?)
posted by spamandkimchi at 12:28 PM on September 7 [3 favorites]

I recommend the Aranet4 for measuring air quality!
posted by ellieBOA at 1:06 PM on September 7 [5 favorites]

Although double the price of the aranet4 and many other solutions (around 350 USD), and a ridiculous name, the uHoo sensor and app have been rare examples of working as advertised and maintaining consistent readings (at least between two units I've used in two rooms).

Why did I go through several different indoor and outdoor air quality sensing options? Well reader it began a year ago when the skies of New York City turned orange for a few days and ended with me picking up every respiratory infection it's possible to get in the following months.

Before that actually I have lived in a renovated home where we worked with HVAC trades who knew enough to install a ductless mini split heat pump but not enough to suggest we might need to ventilate the highly airtight construction to prevent build up of CO2 (among other things like TVOCs) indoors. I noticed this when I started having to take naps between meetings - the uHoo helped identify the volume of CO2 hitting 2k+. It also helped identify when things like ozone and nitrogen dioxide spiked from traffic or local fires (and totally coincidentally I noticed my eyes watering and sinuses exploding).

Point is: there's a lot to learn about air quality and how it correlates with some things we've long considered "allergies" or "just a headache".
posted by Lenie Clarke at 1:52 PM on September 7 [6 favorites]

Great follow-up to the "don't inhale oxalate" themes of previous post.
posted by BigBrooklyn at 1:56 PM on September 7

For what it’s worth the $10 CO2 monitors from AliExpress are ballpark accurate with the much more expensive ones. All you really need to know is whether it’s under 600 (no worries), under 1200 (open a window), or higher (force ventilate and/or leave the room). Don’t break the bank on this.

I have a cheapie and an expensive one next to each other and for general green yellow red assessment the cheap one is fine.
posted by seanmpuckett at 2:32 PM on September 7 [6 favorites]

Professionally and personally, this is relevant to my interests.
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:39 PM on September 7 [1 favorite]

As a long time allergy sufferer and adult-onset asthma sufferer and generally sensitive to indoor are quality and bodily sensations, I absolutely 100% agree with these ideas. Even if air doesn't trigger my allergies, I can just feel heavy, stale air. Or too dry air. Or air with a lot of particulate matter. And too much co2 don't get me started, I get all fuzzy and sleepy. OPEN A WINDOW every day. Even with heat or electricity,. Or someone, please, get me a heat recovery ventilator.

I don't understand how people live with bad air. Don't they feel it? I've seen people, friends, who's health and activity levels decline in places with bad air and no one seems to say "oh its the air" even when its totally the air.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 11:44 PM on September 7 [3 favorites]

I’ve had an aranet4 for a couple of years and have been fascinated by seasonal patterns in CO2 burden. It never gets too high when it’s just me in the house in winter (unless I’m cooking), but ventilation in summer is much poorer unless I have windows open and several fans running. I assume convection is playing a role somehow in winter because of the temperature differential between outside and inside.
posted by eirias at 3:58 AM on September 8 [1 favorite]

I wish I could open windows every day but I live in a state that's on fire half the year. :(
posted by Jacqueline at 5:35 AM on September 8 [2 favorites]

I wish I could open windows every day but I live in a state that's on fire half the year. :(

This. As mentioned above if you have the option looking at Energy Recovery Ventilators (ERVs). Kind of a filtered exhaust/intake fan that (typically) uses a more efficient mechanism (versus a full AC unit) to condition the air it pulls in to be closer to the temperature of the internal air. Fresh outdoor air to offset CO2 and such without drawing in the particulates (PM 2.5 etc) from fires and other sources and other unpleasantness like volatile organics and ozone from traffic and heat-activated smog.

The shit thing is they're expensive and the technology is kind of immature for small scales like homes. Oh and if you're in an apartment building you're fucked (I haven't found a window unit to this effect) but apartment buildings might have stricter HVAC standards to start with in the first place.
posted by Lenie Clarke at 7:52 AM on September 8 [3 favorites]

As our atmosphere becomes increasingly hostile to our health, we will need indoor spaces that are not so.

1) make buildings and vehicles and helmets/masks more air-tight
2) operate them at slight positive pressure so inner air leaks out, not vice versa
3) have monitored and filtered air-intake systems
4) recover energy or at least heat from the exhaust.

Similar issues for water.

we will have to recolonize earth as we increase its contamination with radionuclei, particulates, microplastocs, endocrine disrupting persist organic pollutants, zoonotic diseases, wildfires and war.

that this effort didnt start in the 1950s when we started open air nuke tests is a shame.
posted by No Climate - No Food, No Food - No Future. at 8:28 AM on September 8 [1 favorite]

I remember back in the 90s people working at UMass Boston were complaining of headaches. It turned out that in this building the vents had been shut back in the 70s during the energy crisis. For 20 odd years the only fresh air was coming up on the elevators as no windows opened.
posted by InkaLomax at 8:30 AM on September 8 [3 favorites]

We have struggled to even monitor the air in Louisiana. So much of the IRA will go to Ammonia plants, often bolted onto the existing refineries, to produce "Clean fuel" that increases local air pollution. Because there new facilities only pollute the air in African American areas, they are considered 'clean', and EPA cannot focus on them. , even though the industry is pretty focused on putting these 40-60 new petrochemical plants in African American areas.

And now, it can be defamation for residents to monitor their own air, if said monitoring were to illuminate the underreporting of air pollution at a regulated plant.

In sort, it s far more profitable for oil and gas to suppress this kind of public awareness of pm, so I believe that we will continue to face many hurdles in implementing these recommendations as regulations
posted by eustatic at 9:56 AM on September 8 [7 favorites]

For what it’s worth the $10 CO2 monitors from AliExpress are ballpark accurate with the much more expensive ones.--seanmpuckett

Be careful. Bigclive found one that isn't so accurate (ie, is 100% fake).
posted by eye of newt at 10:16 AM on September 8 [3 favorites]

One of the largest building on the NC State campus is toxic and unusable.
posted by 3.2.3 at 11:48 AM on September 8 [2 favorites]