
Ask HN: How to Breathe in a Polluted City? - PunkedByChaos
I&#x27;m asking this in HN because this is the only place I can expect to not get kneejerk answers, I honestly know of no better place to ask this.<p>So I live in a &quot;developing&quot; country and have to commute by foot for about 10 minutes after getting off the subway to reach my workplace. This road is quite busy with lots of Soviet-era and other kinds of high-pollution vehicles that just keep spewing big clouds of whatever and causing me headaches and sometimes even chest pain.<p>Some websites suggest N95 masks but they all seem like cheap marketing articles more than anything. So I wanted to ask, are N95 masks effective at all against car pollution? If not, are there any other alternatives that don&#x27;t involve carrying around an oxygen tank?<p>Thanks.
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bwb
Great ask, I am very curious about this too. I spent a year in Cairo, but
luckily on the island in the middle of the Nile (better airflow). Living
downtown was supposed to be the equivalent of smoking a pack of cigarettes a
day.

I am most concerned about pm 2.5 particles, and my understanding is the masks
are better at blocking those because they are bigger? I see a lot of people in
London wearing those masks when they are biking...

