
Smog in our brains - neverminder
http://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/07-08/smog.aspx
======
observation
You should be worried about IAQ - indoor air quality.

This is because you spend 90% of your time indoors.

It is also because IAQ is far worse than outdoor air quality. The kitchens of
most homes would be closed down by inspectors if they were commercial.

Correctly ventilating a home with a ERV/HRV, bathroom ventilation and oven
hood (harder than it sounds because many designs are snake oil) solves the
problem. Few people have gone to such lengths, not even the wealthy.

The "Building Performance Podcast" has more information if anybody's
interested. There's a lot of good information online from US government
websites.

Most American homes share a leaky wall with their garage. A garage with
shelves of highly toxic substances that offgas through the wall when the
weather gets hotter.

I intend to design my home so it does not contain these drawbacks.

~~~
bostonvaulter2
Is there an easy way to measure your indoor air quality?

~~~
simongray
I live in Beijing and we use the air purifiers from Xiaomi to measure indoor
air quality (and clean it up). It's true that eg frying bacon really makes the
air quality index spike up a lot.

~~~
logicallee
Off topic but I have a ton of questions about air in Beijing - I can hardly
believe what I've heard. It's kind of off-topic but if you'd have a minute,
could you shoot me an email (see my profile here) or reply with yours? Thanks.

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Terr_
I wouldn't be surprised if some future historians are able to look back at
modern cities the same way that we look at granny pictures of a soot-streaked
city of the industrial revolution.

"Yes, some of them thought that it was bad to have all that stuff around, but
most thought it wasn't too serious compared to the immediate economic benefit
it brought."

~~~
dsego
"Yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created
a lot of value for shareholders."

[http://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995](http://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995)

~~~
Houshalter
Nonsense. This has nothing to do with the planet being destroyed, but minor
health effects of air pollution. Which in first world countries, is vastly
less than it used to be. And could be eliminated entirely in a few years with
technology like solar power and electric cars. Possibly it could have been
seriously cut back decades ago, if environmentalists hadn't fought so hard
against nuclear.

~~~
addicted
Yea. The real problem was fightng against a technology that is more expensive
yhan cleaner options, has massive NIMBY problems that are not yet resolved,
gets more expensive as time goes on, has led to massive cpncentrated disasters
and still is unable to find a solution to its long term problems.

A technology whose proponents's best answer even today is "wait until the next
breakthrough".

Nuclear: The one trick the evil environmentalists won't tell you about that
will solve all your energy problems.

~~~
Houshalter
If we had adopted nuclear power decades ago, none of that would be an issue.
Solar power is only just now catching up to cost effectiveness with nuclear.
And only on sunny days, the storage problem is very far away from being
solved. Maybe coal is cheaper, but only if you exclude externalities. The
amount of radiation released by nuclear is tiny compared to coal. Not to
mention mercury, carbon dioxide, etc.

~~~
freeflight
>If we had adopted nuclear power decades ago, none of that would be an issue.

Then we would have even more problems with final disposal than we already
have, that's the topic none of the pro-nuclear people ever want to touch on
because they fully realize it's quite an issue.

As is, it's already bad enough how plant operators socialize these long-term
costs while keeping all the profits private, which is the only way these
operations can turn a short-term profit. Case in point:
[http://www.dw.com/en/german-government-does-nuclear-waste-
de...](http://www.dw.com/en/german-government-does-nuclear-waste-deal-with-
energy-companies/a-36089376)

It's even more infuriating to see that quote of Sigmar Gabrial boasting that
"society alone doesn't have to bear the costs". How generous of them to pay a
little bit into a fund for the disposal of their own waste, while the German
taxpayer will end up picking the brunt of the bill when, as always, everything
ends up going way over the estimated costs.

Just take a look at Fukushima: TEPCO has a book equity of $US20 billion, total
cleanup costs are estimated at $US250 billion, who's paying for that? Right,
the Japanese government aka the tax payer.

~~~
Houshalter
Even despite that, it's still better than coal. The costs are just more
concentrated, and therefore more apparent. But the fact it's concentrated also
make it at least _possible_ to contain and cleanup. No one would even
_attempt_ to cleanup the environmental damage caused by coal, and it would
cost vastly more than hundreds of billions. The estimated deaths are much
larger than from nuclear accidents.

If we had invested more in Nuclear it would be less of an issue. We've
invented much safer reactors, and more efficient ones that produce much less
waste. Probably much more would have been developed if the investment was
there.

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louprado
Can anyone recommend an air quality detector for personal use. My second floor
office is in downtown Oakland by a busy road. The windows are closed and an
air filter is always running. Perhaps the air filter is providing a false
sense of security and not trapping any sub 2.5 micron particles.

My last air quality detector seemed questionable. I could leave the windows
open during rush hour it would always just say the quality was good. Meanwhile
there is soot on my window sill.

~~~
semi-extrinsic
There are sufficiently many aspects of air quality (NOX, PM2.5, PM10, O3, SO2,
CO, CO2, VOCs, humidity) that a basic trustworthy monitoring station would set
you back at least $500. I'd say get a trustworthy temp/humidity/CO2 sensor,
since those are the only ones you really emit yourself, and get the remaining
data from your local environmental info agency - check e.g. aqicn.org .

Edit: is your air filter a HEPA unit? (Does it look like a big car engine air
filter?) Do you change the filter every 6 months? Those should help.

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acd
Clean diesel is the biggest industry scam since smoking. Thousands die every
year from small particle emission from vehicles. Smog damages baby brain
development.

Most diesel cars emitt up to ten times small particles like pm2.5 than car
regulation and it's really bad for human health.

~~~
jodrellblank
Always a bit of a sucker for conspiracies and woo, reading this left a long
term impression on me:

" _Are Diesels More Dangerous than Cigarettes as a Cause of Lung Cancer?_ " \-
[http://www.second-opinions.co.uk/diesel_lung_cancer.html](http://www.second-
opinions.co.uk/diesel_lung_cancer.html)

------
dsfyu404ed
They didn't mention whether the effect remained constant regardless of
population density.

I'm a big proponent of "you probably shouldn't be inhaling more than you need
to of any sort of particle" but I wouldn't be surprised if the small amounts
of extra stress of day to day life in a more densely populated area isn't good
for you.

~~~
losteric
> I wouldn't be surprised if the small amounts of extra stress of day to day
> life in a more densely populated area isn't good for you.

Extra psychological stress is always detrimental. They did mention other
variables, including noise and other gasses, were not controlled for.

However, the mouse study removed those variables:

> He exposed mice to high levels of fine particulate air pollution five times
> a week, eight hours a day, to mimic the exposure a human commuter might
> receive if he or she lived in the suburbs and worked in a smoggy city
> (Molecular Psychiatry, 2011). After 10 months, they found that the mice that
> had been exposed to polluted air took longer to learn a maze task and made
> more mistakes than mice that had not breathed in the pollution. > > Nelson
> also found that the pollutant-exposed mice showed signs of the rodent
> equivalent of depression. Mice said to express depressive-like symptoms give
> up swimming more quickly in a forced swim test and stop sipping sugar water
> that they normally find attractive. Both behaviors can be reversed with
> antidepressants. Nelson found that mice exposed to the polluted air scored
> higher on tests of depressive-like responses.

I suggest reading the article. There were other disturbing changes that
strongly suggest pollution may be the modern analogue to the Roman Empire's
lead paint. It's definitely worth significant and rapid research investment.

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orthoganol
How can it be that there are not decades of thorough, prioritized studies on
the connection between air pollution and cognitive impairment?

~~~
gbrown
$

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gregw134
This doesn't prove that smog is the cause. Perhaps the people in smoggier
districts had lower education levels and didn't stay as mentally active in old
age? There are too many other variables that could be at fault.

