Better Air Quality is Good For You
Sensors make taking care of the air you breathe easier than ever.
One topic I want to explore in depth on this blog is that of making our lives and our health better with good habits (and of course technology). Air quality has been getting much needed attention in recent years in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, and while direct concerns about pandemics seem to be waning, the truth is, making your air quality better is good for your health, the health of the people you share your air with and the world at large.
With new technology, and less low hanging health fruit (like not eating hamburgers all day [poor diet], or driving everywhere [lack of exercise, unhealthy cities]) air quality is a great thing for people to tackle to improve their wellbeing. And of course, if air quality is really bad in your city or neighborhood (and it is in many wealthy cities, for example London) then a need for better air quality might actually be quite pressing.
The goal of this article is not to stress you out or mark you anxious, we all deal with the environmental cards we’ve been dealt as best as we can. Reducing your impact on the world can help you sleep more easily at night, but reducing your exposure to bad things is probably going to be helpful whether you’re getting exposed to a little or a lot. The goal of this blog is to help you optimize so you can be better protected than you’d otherwise be.
I am by no means an atmospheric or building scientist, but the way I look at air quality is by looking at the composition and contents of the air. When we have an understanding of what we are breathing, we can be more thoughtful about cycling and maintaining the quality of our air.
Particles
The air we breath is full of all manner of particles of varying sizes (with finer particles such as those given off from fossil fuel combustion being particularly concerning due to their ability to penetrate deep into the body) which can vary from tiny particles of dust and pollen, to bits of plastic fiber and even heavy metals.
Filtering these particles out is thankfully pretty easy, with filters! I won’t go into the minutae of different filters in this post, but suffice to say, different types of filters will be able to filter out different types and sizes of particles, and somethings the way these things work can be unintuitive because tiny particles sometimes operate in weird ways. Masks are effectively two way filters on your face, and different types of masks are going to function at different levels.
Operationalizing filtration to improve your air quality is as simple as making sure the filters on your homes HVAC system are replaced regularly and that you clean the various other filters which are dutifully collected stuff from the air around you. If you want to really help your air quality, an “air purifier” which is a filter strapped to a fan that you sit in your home will push your air through a filter just as it’s floating about your room.
Vacuuming is another underappreciated way you can filter your homes air, not only does your vacuum likely have a replaceable or better cleanable filter of its own, but its great at sucking up little particles, and dust and debris that is liable to break down into particles over time. Adding moisture to the mix with mopping helps prevent dry particles floating into the air - which is part of why you’ll frequently see water being sprayed to mitigate dust and particles at construction sites.
Gases
The other major thing in the air around us (which is of course composed of various gases) are a mix of gases.
Some of these gases like VOCs (volatile organic compounds) can be substantially reduced by activated carbon filters, while others like nitrogen dioxide, and carbon dioxide (which is probably not great for you in high levels) are much harder to reduce.
One type of gas thats easy to nip in the bud is radon, which is a radioactive gas that seeps from the earth in many places, and tends to collect on the lowest floors of structures. If you live or spend lots of time in a basement or bottom floor, it can be worth getting a digital radon tester (sometimes these can be rented from libraries) because high levels of radon exposure increase your risk of lung cancer.
Ventilation
Reducing various gases as well as the amount of particulates in the air often comes down to ventilation, that is getting air flowing through our home so that the hopefully lower concentrations of unhealthy gases and particles in outside air can come indoors.
You’ll notice I said hopefully because if it’s pollen season, or if theres forest fire smoke outside, opening the window is obviously not going to help on net - you should at least be thinking about this though, because I think a lot of people become obsessed with one air quality metric and forget others. Anyhow, if the air outside has less particles and VOCs than inside your home, opening a window is a good idea! If it does not then it is probably not! For example, as you can see from the picture at the top of this post, my home has very low particulate matter levels, but poor levels of CO2. You want to make sure that bringing one thing down does not simply bring another up. Ventilation is, thanks to a focus on airtight homes for better energy efficiency, particularly easy to overlook.
Temperature
Temperature is interesting in the indoor air quality equation because while we feel temperature very acutely, the truth is, unless at unsafe levels, hot or cold air is probably less bad for you than a ton of VOC’s, CO2 or the like. In fact, if you spend a lot of time in heat, you might find you adapt to it.
Sensors
Bringing things full circle, the thing that enables me to think about air quality without looking out from a tower at the air to see if its hazy, or going outside to see if I have allergies, are great websites like AQICN which give you global outdoor air quality readings, while some cities even have crowdsourced indoor air quality data. Inside my home as seen in the image above, I have both CO2 sensors (mine is a great unit with an E-Paper display from Aranet) which tells me CO2, humidity, and air temperature, and PM sensors (I have one from Amazon, but I wish Aranet would make one similar to their CO2 sensor). Having both outdoor data, and data inside your house is super empowering, and can really help you nudge things in the right direction!