
How Dirty Is Your Air? - chewymouse
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601609/how-dirty-is-your-air/
======
jacobolus
> _The World Health Organization estimates that 80 percent of people living in
> urban environments are being exposed to unhealthy levels of air pollution
> from particulates and it says they cause four million deaths annually around
> the world._

The level of particulates middle-class people face indoors in the worst urban
environments is tiny compared to the level of particulates people face (esp.
in rural areas) wherever cooking is done indoors over a wood fire. We’re
talking about a level of wood smoke filling the room which causes eyes to
redden and start watering, and makes it physically difficult to breathe.
(Source: my parents are anthropologists and my godparents are indigenous rural
Mexican peasant farmers, and I spent lots of time growing up sitting next to
wood-burning hearth fires.) On average, by historical standards, humans’
current exposure to particulates is very low and continues to drop every year.

I don’t know if it makes sense for people to freak out about cooking eggs in
their houses, though having effective indoor ventilation is obviously
worthwhile, all else equal.

Edit: I looked up the actual WHO source (not linked in the OP):
[http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2014/air-
pollut...](http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2014/air-
pollution/en/)

> _After analysing the risk factors and taking into account revisions in
> methodology, WHO estimates indoor air pollution was linked to 4.3 million
> deaths in 2012 in households cooking over coal, wood and biomass stoves._

This is _not_ talking about people using a gas range with an underpowered
ventilation hood to cook eggs, and the 4 million deaths number is not
restricted to urban areas. The people dying here don’t need a little
electronic air quality detector, they need electrification and rising incomes
so they can afford better heaters and stoves.

To cut outdoor air pollution, we should get people to stop burning piles of
trash, stop using fire to clear large areas for agriculture, switch away from
coal power plants as soon as possible, and try to get the worst polluting old
vehicles off the roads.

~~~
internaut
Agree with all of that.

Still no reason not to be optimizing our environments a bit more than the
usual person might. There are less obvious threats to respiratory health in
the developed world but the ones that are left are probably more insidious
e.g. radon gas, VOCs from paints.

Having cooking fires sucks for the women tending them in the Third World but
most family members probably aren't in the house/hut for most of the day.
They're probably engaged in plenty of physical activity outdoors. We on the
other hand are sitting in places with artificial florescent lights and are in
the same spots on a consistent basis.

We should:

\- have natural sunlight (using my magical heliostats)

\- run about more

\- be surrounded by plants (perhaps visits from cool animals)

I should start a minor religion.

------
reedlaw
I live in China and have a Laser Egg (1) in my home. It's extremely accurate,
often matching the AQI reading found by online services. What I'm interested
in is learning how to purify the air inside. I knew cooking was a major
culprit in raising PM2.5 levels. But even when running two air purifiers
sometimes the AQI just can't be lowered too much. I think it's leaky seals in
the apartment. We're on the 18th floor and on a windy day can feel a huge
draft from the front door and hear the wind escaping the balcony windows.

1\.
[http://www.originstech.com/products/laseregg/](http://www.originstech.com/products/laseregg/)

~~~
derefr
One thing I've never figured out about air purification is how to keep air
both particle-free, and oxygenated. I don't _want_ to seal all my doors and
windows to run an air purifier—I immediately feel suffocated by the CO2
buildup from my own breathing. Is there a best of both worlds?

~~~
eightysix_four
Fresh air systems are what you are looking for. They purify and bring in
outside air (be warned, they lower HVAC efficiency), a lot of them with a high
enough CFM to pressurize your house to, exhausting all of the air inside
outward so that the leaky seals aren't an issue.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
The problem is that these don't fit into most Chinese apartment rentals.
Landlords could make some big bank by installing an HVAC, but they are missing
even in new buildings where 90sqm apartments are going for more than a million
bucks.

~~~
derefr
Yep. My little apartment (400m²) in a low-rise in Canada, built just five
years ago, has no in-unit ventilation whatsoever. If I want a cross-breeze
(and I always want a cross-breeze), I have to open the outside windows and the
door to the hallway, and let a ton of dust and pollen flow into the unit from
outside. I have no idea who thought building an apartment building today like
this made sense, but it seems to be a common perspective.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
400 sqm is a "little" apartment? Sheesh, first-world problems :)

------
pygy_
I'm curious about the composition of the particles emitted when frying the
eggs, and on the specific toxicity of cooking oil droplets and specs of
albumin...

I'd expect both to be readily processed by macrophages, without harm, unlike
the soot particles produced by burning either wood, coal or petrol
derivatives...

~~~
derefr
Makes me wonder how much it would cost to turn an oven range hood into a full-
on chemical fume-hood, with the hanging plastic isolation flaps.

------
tim333
Funnily enough I'm just embarking on a little project to monitor the the air
around me and have ordered a particle counter off ebay
([http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/New-Hot-Selling-USB-Port-Laser-
Dus...](http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/New-Hot-Selling-USB-Port-Laser-Dust-Sensor-
Module-
PM1-0-PM2-5-PM10-Detector-/172139517641?hash=item28145096c9:g:mBcAAOSwu1VW7X9u))

£29, hooks up to usb somehow. I've yet to get it and try to figure drivers.

I'm now trying to find a cheap NO2 sensor. Those seem to be the main
categories that do people in in London. The Guardian figured 3,537 deaths for
pm2.5, 5,879 deaths from NO2 in 2010 approx.

~~~
dharma1
[https://www.cooking-hacks.com/no2-gas-sensor-5339](https://www.cooking-
hacks.com/no2-gas-sensor-5339)

~~~
tim333
Ta

~~~
tim333
Update - bought and cancelled that one as it's specs didn't seem sensitive
enough - not quite sure - says to 0.05ppm which is still quite high. Now
checking out [http://www.alphasense.com/index.php/products/nitrogen-
dioxid...](http://www.alphasense.com/index.php/products/nitrogen-dioxide-2/)

------
ZeroFries
Is this an ad?

~~~
xiphias
Yes, and these cheap devices sadly don't have accuracy description. I would be
OK to pay for it if some accuracy would be guaranteed, but writing that it's
calibrated and not specifying the maximal error looks always fishy.

~~~
robryk
I would also be wary of how the accuracy declines over time. E.g. how does the
device keep properly sized dust from staying or small scratches from
developing on the surfaces that are involved in the measurement (e.g. lenses
and mirrors for optical devices)?

------
chm
During undergrad, me and some peers (all chemists) talked about having such a
network of air sensors. Having good resolution on air quality measurements
could drastically improve the quality of life of people living in big cities.
We never knew how to monetize this, however. One way we thought about was to
install a private network of sensors (inside and outside houses) and then sell
the datasets to research agencies. Doesn't see too profitable though.

Ideally what you need is a machine that can take different measurements: wind
speed and direction, temperature, humidity, VOC levels, ozone, nitrogen
compounds and general particulate matter.

A static network of sensors is a great start, but your measurements basically
define a surface. What you'd want is a fleet of drones which could "stand
still" in formation, let's say a 50 x 50 x 50 drone cube each 1m apart, and
take volumetric + time measurements. That would be _awesome_ :)

~~~
tim333
There's a fair network in London
[https://www.londonair.org.uk/london/asp/PublicEpisodes.asp](https://www.londonair.org.uk/london/asp/PublicEpisodes.asp)

The pollution seems fairly spread out so I'm not sure how much having higher
resolution would help. I think those are government/council owned.

I was toying with a commercial service where householders could pay a bit for
measurements on their homes and could try to counter bad stuff with filters
and the like. Not quite sure about the economics - the cost of sensors seems
to be dropping rapidly. The government monitoring stations I think are like
$25k but there's cheaper stuff out there.

------
miesman
Reasonable lower priced option from china:

[https://www.amazon.com/UNI-T-UT938C-Detector-Thermometer-
Tem...](https://www.amazon.com/UNI-T-UT938C-Detector-Thermometer-
Temperature/dp/B013SOD0LA/)

or slightly lower priced slightly older version on eBay

[http://www.ebay.com/itm/UNI-T-UT-338C-Indoor-VOC-
PM2-5-Air-Q...](http://www.ebay.com/itm/UNI-T-UT-338C-Indoor-VOC-PM2-5-Air-
Quality-Detector-Monitor-
Thermometer-41E9-/131595466298?hash=item1ea3b3763a:g:KF4AAOSwZtJW9Q4p)

------
dharma1
Some indoor air purifiers have particle count sensors that activate the
purifier fan.

BTW - anyone have recommendations for an air purifier with a true HEPA filter?

~~~
shawnps
I've heard good things about this:
[http://smartairfilters.com/en](http://smartairfilters.com/en) which is really
just a fan with a HEPA filter attached to it.

~~~
dharma1
Was looking them earlier - really like what they're doing (back to basics -
airflow + HEPA Filter) but prohibitive shipping costs to UK/Europe from China

------
maxaf
Canary - [https://canary.is/](https://canary.is/) \- the home security camera
comes equipped with sensors that are capable of measuring air quality. I
reckon this will be a big deal for a lot of people, although right now most
don't even know that such measurements are possible or why they're important.

------
georgecmu
Surprisingly, I haven't heard of AirViz before. Their CEO is Allah Nourbakhsh,
CMU Robotics Institute professor, previously(?) involved with GigaPan.

------
f_allwein
not a very good name for international expansion as "Speck" means "bacon" in
German.

[https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speck](https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speck)

~~~
sehr
Are there anywhere near enough German speakers to make that a problem?

~~~
f_allwein
roughly 100 million, which is not that much in the cosmic scale of things. But
if it becomes a globally successful product, they'd have to live with
sarcastic comments from us, or come up with a different name in DE.

------
Aelinsaar
This is a clickbait ad, "See what one family learned!" I come to HN to avoid
this.

~~~
entheon

      MIT Technology Review Magazine
    

Better than your average clickbait, but yeah cliffhanger-as-headline is a
cheesey tactic.

I still enjoy this site, as a serious indicator of regional, population-
center-oriented indicator of air quality:
[https://plumelabs.com](https://plumelabs.com)

~~~
Aelinsaar
I wish that I could just come to the full-throated defense of MIT's
publications, but I think we all know how press offices can be, and that
doesn't reflect on the researchers or academics IMO.

------
internaut
If you've ever worked as a cleaner you'll appreciate what tobacco smoke, foods
cooked in Indian style, people not venting their rooms (hello mold) can do to
the furnishings, walls and ceilings. Maybe if your environment is turning a
deep ocher, it isn't healthy to live in it. I am completely unsurprised if the
people who live in them die younger.

People with wealth probably imagine themselves immune to the problem as they
have a cleaning staff but that is not true either. They need to watch out with
new cars and new houses. These should be ideally left alone for up to six
months so the off gassing of paints, lacquers, chaulking can happen and also
the dust level from construction can die down.

------
internaut
Yes it's an advert but the problem itself is a real one.

Dirty air will grind your respiratory system down. Your lungs. You need those
to breathe.

