This article seems to make fantastic jumps from the believable -- mortality from overall air pollution (e.g. in Delhi) to the frankly unbelievable -- your ultrasonic humidifier supposedly reducing your life by nearly an hour each night, or that a daily commute between Newark and NYC takes half a year off your life.
According to this logic, anyone who works in the subway should be dying, what, 10 years earlier? Which is obviously not happening.
Similarly, it seems impossible to believe that the minerals in the air from humidifiers are equivalently dangerous to factory pollution or cigarette smoke. Different categories of particles are going to affect the body differently, no? I mean, our body requires minerals -- we're drinking them in our water all day long -- while certain factories may be belching out straight-up poison.
These statistics are just not passing the smell test. They seem to be extrapolations of extrapolations of extrapolations. This article's conclusions don't seem even remotely convincing.
Thank you for this extensive resource on air quality. Yes, it needs to get more attention as it is one of the main drivers of mortality of environmental risks.
One thing one has to bear in mind is that often when you optmize your home for low PM (e.g. with air purifiers and fixing of air leackage) your CO2 will get very high causing headaches and reduce cognitive performance.
So it always makes sense for indoor air quality monitoring to measure PM and CO2 in parallel.
We have open source, open hardware build instructions for a very reliable Air quality sensor that can be used to measure PM2.5 and also CO2 [1]. It is very accurate for the fraction of the costs of commercial sensors. You can build it for less than USD 20 (or with CO2 for less than USD 50) and send the data to our cloud server or any other backend.
I am more than happy to send you some free PCBs (you just paypal me the cost of the postage) and you can build your own sensor and log the data. Contact me if you are interested.
The biggest pitfall I see with this is we’re extrapolating from large doses of air pollution to very tiny ones.
Clearly we have enough evidence to say that smoking a pack a day or living in a smog-filled city will cut years off your life. But we would need truly gigantic samples to show that blowing birthday candles or broiling fish once a week will cut weeks off your life.
Instead these conclusions are being derived on linear extrapolations from large air particulate doses. Yet many things in biology follow the principal of hormesis, where a small dose or a toxin may be harmless or even helpful.
Similar models have been used for years and are still the gold standard when predicting the health effects of radiation exposure. Yet mountains of evidence show that radiation workers, who are regularly exposed to small dosages of otherwise harmful regulation do not have anywhere near the cancer rates we’d expect from the linear extrapolation models.
Sorry for the pendantry: it sounds like you mean linear interpolation, rather than extrapolation. Extrapolation is where you project outside the range of previously collected data, and is particularly likely to result in false conclusions. Interpolation is where you estimate a value inside the range of collected data from points around it, and is usually a lot less dangerous. But I agree with your point that, in this case, it does seem pretty baseless.
Could you give some citations for studies on radiation workers? The permissible doses in most countries are extremely low and there are not that many people working in the industry. This makes me wonder they manage to achieve statistically significant results.
EVs reduce tailpipe exhaust near roads but it's worth noting that brake abrasion dust isn't going away anytime soon and it's considered very bad to breathe, possibly in the same league as diesel emission particles.[1] I guess regenerative braking on an EV reduces this somewhat.
Most EVs indeed use regenerative braking. Which means your brake pads last a lot longer as you barely use them. Tire particles are a bigger problem. Just think of the mass of tires that you erode away before you replace them (routinely) and compare that to the brake pads you replace much less often. And it's not just the tires that erode but also the road. Asphalt particles are nasty as well. Though most of that dust is quite coarse and doesn't stay in the air as long. But then, tire and road dust is apparently the biggest source of microplastics in our oceans. It washes away, enters our sewers, rivers, and eventually the oceans. It's bad for different reasons as well.
Anecdotal, but since recently getting a plug-in hybrid I've only been using regenerative braking except for the most abrupt stops. Whenever you approach a red light or junction it's not hard to stay within the regen braking zone.
Having lived in Central America, I can tell you that almost none of the recommendations[1] here are relevant, at least in relation to the kind of air pollution that kills the numbers of people shown in those graphs. Smoky fires (mostly for cooking) inside small huts are everywhere in much of the world, and very few of the affected people understand the risks. Even if they did, they rarely have any viable alternatives.
If you tried to tell those people about particle counters or HEPA filters, you might as well tell them about cold fusion while you're at it. Sure, all the things mentioned might help, but for anyone with the means to follow the recommendations in this article (and with the ability to read an article), I can almost guarantee that air quality is not going to be a major factor in your life expectancy.
[1] With the exception of "Be careful about smoke when cooking."
I'm surprised "having a bonfire" isn't on this list, but I'm afraid to see how detrimental it might be.
The nostalgia factor is sort of wearing off now that I'm 40 and don't want my clothes to smell bad or have a low-key asthma attack. The last time I went camping in a campground and everyone had a fire going, the whole park was completely choked with smoke that it made going for a walk really crappy. It's such a weird activity, driving cars out to the woods to pay to burn dead trees.
Pretty close to being on the list. "Have a really smoky fire at home. Life cost: 1 day"
Considering the close association of food, warmth, security and socialization with the habitual use of fire for at the very least several hundred thousand years of human history, is it really any surprise that some people still enjoy the practice?
I'm surprised this doesn't mention gas stoves and ovens. Gas is the "high end" option, yet creates totally unnecessary PM2.5 pollution in your home. Children growing up with gas stoves have higher rates of asthma.
Very interesting to me that gas is considered the 'high end'-option, I presume in the U.S?
Where I live, the high end-option is to get an induction stove. I have one, and it's extremely pleasant to cook on. Granted, I've never cooked on gas because that alternative is mostly not used, in my experience.
Few years ago I moved from a little apartment with an electric range to an SFH with gas everything.
"Good for you," my gas-enthusiast family said, "now you have a REAL stove"
It still takes forever to boil water in a pot. The food tastes the same. I wonder why furnaces have these fancy high-efficiency heat exchangers and stoves don't? Cost?
I wouldn't mind going back to electric. I just assumed it cost more, but maybe cooking isn't significant compared to running a furnace.
It really depends where you live, where I live in Asia electric (induction) is the high end option and gas is the standard. Electric also doesn't work great with a wok.
I don't think we should do domestic cooking with gas for reasons that include respiratory health, but it's worth noting that the link between modern domestic gas ovens and childhood asthma is very weak relative to other risk factors, which might be why it's not mentioned in the article.
"When the meta-analysis puts everything together, they come to the conclusion that gas cooking produces a small increase in asthma risk for children, perhaps a 1.5 percentage point increase in risk." (https://emilyoster.substack.com/p/gas-stoves-finally)
Two years ago, I participated in a rocis.org study cohort. It was very informative. Participants are given a collection of monitors (particulate, CO2, radon, and one other I can't remember). We are given three air particulate monitors. participants collect the data and send it back to rocis.org. Here were some of the main takeaways personally. Note that I live in Pittsburgh which doesn't have great air.
A. The idea that you should "open your window to let in fresh air" is false. The outdoor air is 10x worse at my house and I don't live it a "polluted" neighborhood but in the burbs.
B. Monitoring is very insightful. I put one monitor outside, one in the living room, and one in my bedroom. The outdoor air like I said was 10x worse than indoors. Indoors wasn't so great either. I replaced my furnace electrostatic filters with quality HEPA filters (they make box filters the same size as electrostatic panels and they are beasts). The indoor air quality improved by about 30%. I added a Blue HEPA filter to the bedroom. It runs continuously at the middle fan setting. Bedroom air quality improved by about 50%.
C. Cooking is the biggest contributor to indoor pollution. When you monitor in real-time this becomes obvious. Induction is the way to go. Of course, the high-end appliance manufacturers are going to continue to make you covet that gas range. But if you're building or renovating a kitchen, go inductive.
US with worse physical activity... I think this is car culture taking its toll. So many spend so much time in their car, and forget that you're really just sitting down. This means that in order to get the most value out of a car, you have to sit more. More hours on the road, less hours moving around. I'm not prescribing anything for anyone... it's fine if people want to spend most of their day in their car, I'm just saying some people are looking like their body has been molded by a car seat, and can't walk for a few blocks without getting tired.
In addition to lost life, there is also a cost to quality of life. Air quality is one of the biggest contributors to the risk of senile dementia. But also the gas composition is known to affect cognition in the short run as well, with a measurable difference in cognitive tests when indoor CO2 is elevated.
I think it’s highly likely that in 20 years we will view diesel cars like we do leaded fuel. An insanely bad idea that we knew was bad at the time but continued to use.
No need to bring in effects to cognition, even. It just sucks to live in a place where “(tonight’s run|tomorrow’s hike) is canceled because the air quality is shit” is a thing.
We recommend to our new parent friends that they get a room air purifier for their new babies.
It simultaneously generates white noise and the accompanying deep bass rumble that is calming like a car ride, and it gives peace of mind knowing that they spend a third of their life with ultra clean air.
Micro-managing your life to this extent is probably why all dystopian books/movies involve some well-meaning technical person who thinks we should be doing XYZ to prolong our lives.
While these things may (anecdotally) prolong your life, does anybody really want to be 102 and having to be nursed for all the basic needs like bathing yourself?
Combine this article with the many(many) others that tell you how to micro-manage all aspects of your life(to be "super productive") and you instantly find that once you start to deviate from your steady-state of micro-management, your worry skyrockets.
I never understood perspectives akin to "why would I want to add years to my life when I'll just be old anyways?". I think many people don't realize that if you take care of your body (especially eating well and movement) you not only extend your lifespan but your quality of life as well in the later years.
Anecdotally, my parents exercise regularly and take decent care of themselves compared to their friends (I even got them juicing regularly). You can tell the difference because most of their friends of the same age are dying or living a severely reduced quality of life while my dad still plays hockey regularly and my mom exercises daily. Both have very few health issues (other than a bit of high blood pressure).
I guess what I'm getting at is that it's kind of sad to me that we've become so used to the idea that old age automatically = shitty when I think there is so much that we could be doing that would mean we could live long lives AND still have autonomy and comfort. I definitely agree that if you micromanage things to a level where you are just stressing or orthorexic that's not good, but I don't think that's the only approach if you want to live a long, healthy life.
I lived in BKK for over a year and I checked the AQI like weather. I bought a reliable pm2 reader. Air filtering system for my house and wore a mask religiously outside. The air was so bad that I began to get very ill before i started to employ these 'Micro-managements'
I'm not understanding why you feel this is micro-management. People constantly "micro-manage" their life in far more detailed ways than this - what you eat, what you wear, where you sit, all kinds of trivial decisions made minute-by-minute as you live. Being aware of one more environmental factor and making some decisions based on it hardly feels like a huge additional burden on my life.
Yes, if anything, we should be macro-managing. The environmental air quality that we incur on ourselves is the largest factor we will have to deal with in life, why not start there? Why are we tolerating a society predicated on burning fuel to push two tonnes of steel around for almost any kind of human travel when there are so many cleaner alternatives?
In this specific instance, the solution is very low cost and low effort, so the ROI is probably good.
Also, in general, the later years of your life when you've gained experience and wisdom are quite valuable to the world, it's not a bad idea to maximize those.
I'm curious whether the issue the author identifies (real or not) with ultrasonic humidifiers applies also to humidifiers that simply blow air through a wet membrane..
> Nothing else is so important while also being so easy to address.
It's actually not that easy to address if you don't have extra cash laying around. Most people in the world will not do the things on this list.
Other things it leaves out, like frying food (edit: I'm a moron, it does mention it down the line), or buying furniture or clothes that off-gas VOCs, or living or working in a place with fiberglass-lined air ducts, or using a gas range or oven.
Years ago I read scientists saying that indoor air pollution was one of the largest causes of death, disease, and decreased quality of life. So I decided to take it seriously. This is one of my biggest eccentricities, as people find it very hard to believe anything invisible matters.
My biggest hack in this regard: living somewhere with low enough ambient pollution that you can open a window. Say less than 50 pm 2.5 outdoors. This reliably leads to a pm 2.5 of 4 indoors, even with windows shut, as long as I am not cooking poorly.
Then the open window will vent VOCs and CO2. Even a tiny crack of an open window in winter is sufficient. In summer you need more open.
That’s pretty much it, and the rest is making sure not to burn stuff when cooking, which mostly involves keeping the stove clean and not letting anything fall on the burners, and putting hot water in warm pans after cooking.
I measure all of this with an awair, a laseregg, and a co2 monitor. It’s pretty low effort and I feel confident the air quality is good.
If I do mess up while cooking I open windows to vent and put on a mask until it has dissipated. It’s all mostly just background habit now.
This is a good list. One other important thing to do if you can help it is to never live near a road. Any road, even infrequently driven on ones. If there's only one car per day on a road, but you live ten feet from it, and occasionally the wind blows the exhaust in your direction, you're breathing that in. Walls don't help. Live at least one mile in a straight line from highways.
How is it possible to separate DALYs lost from high BMI from DALYs lost from low vegetables and/or low physical activity? The author never fully explains the methodology behind the graph.
I'm dubious that water soluble 'particles' from water hardness are a major concern. The meters can just distinguish sizes, but I expect that particles of a given size can radically differ in how harmful they are if nothing else based just on the body's ability to clear them.
[+] [-] crazygringo|4 years ago|reply
According to this logic, anyone who works in the subway should be dying, what, 10 years earlier? Which is obviously not happening.
Similarly, it seems impossible to believe that the minerals in the air from humidifiers are equivalently dangerous to factory pollution or cigarette smoke. Different categories of particles are going to affect the body differently, no? I mean, our body requires minerals -- we're drinking them in our water all day long -- while certain factories may be belching out straight-up poison.
These statistics are just not passing the smell test. They seem to be extrapolations of extrapolations of extrapolations. This article's conclusions don't seem even remotely convincing.
[+] [-] ahaucnx|4 years ago|reply
One thing one has to bear in mind is that often when you optmize your home for low PM (e.g. with air purifiers and fixing of air leackage) your CO2 will get very high causing headaches and reduce cognitive performance.
So it always makes sense for indoor air quality monitoring to measure PM and CO2 in parallel.
We have open source, open hardware build instructions for a very reliable Air quality sensor that can be used to measure PM2.5 and also CO2 [1]. It is very accurate for the fraction of the costs of commercial sensors. You can build it for less than USD 20 (or with CO2 for less than USD 50) and send the data to our cloud server or any other backend.
I am more than happy to send you some free PCBs (you just paypal me the cost of the postage) and you can build your own sensor and log the data. Contact me if you are interested.
[1] https://www.airgradient.com/diy/
[+] [-] dcolkitt|4 years ago|reply
Clearly we have enough evidence to say that smoking a pack a day or living in a smog-filled city will cut years off your life. But we would need truly gigantic samples to show that blowing birthday candles or broiling fish once a week will cut weeks off your life.
Instead these conclusions are being derived on linear extrapolations from large air particulate doses. Yet many things in biology follow the principal of hormesis, where a small dose or a toxin may be harmless or even helpful.
Similar models have been used for years and are still the gold standard when predicting the health effects of radiation exposure. Yet mountains of evidence show that radiation workers, who are regularly exposed to small dosages of otherwise harmful regulation do not have anywhere near the cancer rates we’d expect from the linear extrapolation models.
[+] [-] quietbritishjim|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fsh|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] colechristensen|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] emptybits|4 years ago|reply
Tire dust is also concerning.[2]
[1] https://academic.oup.com/metallomics/article/12/3/371/595624...
[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22642836/
[+] [-] jillesvangurp|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] heipei|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] modeless|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jansan|4 years ago|reply
But tire abrasion is arguably worse for EVs due to the higher initial torque. Does anybody know if there is any difference between EVs and ICEs?
[+] [-] curiousgeorgio|4 years ago|reply
If you tried to tell those people about particle counters or HEPA filters, you might as well tell them about cold fusion while you're at it. Sure, all the things mentioned might help, but for anyone with the means to follow the recommendations in this article (and with the ability to read an article), I can almost guarantee that air quality is not going to be a major factor in your life expectancy.
[1] With the exception of "Be careful about smoke when cooking."
[+] [-] hettygreen|4 years ago|reply
The nostalgia factor is sort of wearing off now that I'm 40 and don't want my clothes to smell bad or have a low-key asthma attack. The last time I went camping in a campground and everyone had a fire going, the whole park was completely choked with smoke that it made going for a walk really crappy. It's such a weird activity, driving cars out to the woods to pay to burn dead trees.
[+] [-] brbsix|4 years ago|reply
Considering the close association of food, warmth, security and socialization with the habitual use of fire for at the very least several hundred thousand years of human history, is it really any surprise that some people still enjoy the practice?
https://dynomight.net/air/#:~:text=Have%20a%20really,1%20day
[+] [-] modeless|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] occz|4 years ago|reply
Where I live, the high end-option is to get an induction stove. I have one, and it's extremely pleasant to cook on. Granted, I've never cooked on gas because that alternative is mostly not used, in my experience.
[+] [-] ReactiveJelly|4 years ago|reply
Few years ago I moved from a little apartment with an electric range to an SFH with gas everything.
"Good for you," my gas-enthusiast family said, "now you have a REAL stove"
It still takes forever to boil water in a pot. The food tastes the same. I wonder why furnaces have these fancy high-efficiency heat exchangers and stoves don't? Cost?
I wouldn't mind going back to electric. I just assumed it cost more, but maybe cooking isn't significant compared to running a furnace.
[+] [-] eli|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ramchip|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] williamsmj|4 years ago|reply
"When the meta-analysis puts everything together, they come to the conclusion that gas cooking produces a small increase in asthma risk for children, perhaps a 1.5 percentage point increase in risk." (https://emilyoster.substack.com/p/gas-stoves-finally)
[+] [-] intrasight|4 years ago|reply
A. The idea that you should "open your window to let in fresh air" is false. The outdoor air is 10x worse at my house and I don't live it a "polluted" neighborhood but in the burbs.
B. Monitoring is very insightful. I put one monitor outside, one in the living room, and one in my bedroom. The outdoor air like I said was 10x worse than indoors. Indoors wasn't so great either. I replaced my furnace electrostatic filters with quality HEPA filters (they make box filters the same size as electrostatic panels and they are beasts). The indoor air quality improved by about 30%. I added a Blue HEPA filter to the bedroom. It runs continuously at the middle fan setting. Bedroom air quality improved by about 50%.
C. Cooking is the biggest contributor to indoor pollution. When you monitor in real-time this becomes obvious. Induction is the way to go. Of course, the high-end appliance manufacturers are going to continue to make you covet that gas range. But if you're building or renovating a kitchen, go inductive.
[+] [-] graeme|4 years ago|reply
Totally agreed about cooking. Surprising how much a tiny scree up can send rates skyrocketing to 300+.
[+] [-] proc0|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scotty79|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nwah1|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PurpleFoxy|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shostack|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] physicles|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jaytaylor|4 years ago|reply
[Citation needed]
[+] [-] mensetmanusman|4 years ago|reply
It simultaneously generates white noise and the accompanying deep bass rumble that is calming like a car ride, and it gives peace of mind knowing that they spend a third of their life with ultra clean air.
https://www.consumerreports.org/products/air-purifiers-29549...
This one has lasted almost a decade of continuous night time usage. It’s amazing how dirty the air is when you see it.
[+] [-] phantom_oracle|4 years ago|reply
While these things may (anecdotally) prolong your life, does anybody really want to be 102 and having to be nursed for all the basic needs like bathing yourself?
Combine this article with the many(many) others that tell you how to micro-manage all aspects of your life(to be "super productive") and you instantly find that once you start to deviate from your steady-state of micro-management, your worry skyrockets.
[+] [-] shlant|4 years ago|reply
Anecdotally, my parents exercise regularly and take decent care of themselves compared to their friends (I even got them juicing regularly). You can tell the difference because most of their friends of the same age are dying or living a severely reduced quality of life while my dad still plays hockey regularly and my mom exercises daily. Both have very few health issues (other than a bit of high blood pressure).
I guess what I'm getting at is that it's kind of sad to me that we've become so used to the idea that old age automatically = shitty when I think there is so much that we could be doing that would mean we could live long lives AND still have autonomy and comfort. I definitely agree that if you micromanage things to a level where you are just stressing or orthorexic that's not good, but I don't think that's the only approach if you want to live a long, healthy life.
[+] [-] antigirl|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codingdave|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kiliantics|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smiley1437|4 years ago|reply
Also, in general, the later years of your life when you've gained experience and wisdom are quite valuable to the world, it's not a bad idea to maximize those.
[+] [-] jonnycomputer|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nitrogen|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Plough_Jogger|4 years ago|reply
>Just use an evaporative or steam humidifier, which seem to create almost no particles.
[+] [-] throwaway823882|4 years ago|reply
It's actually not that easy to address if you don't have extra cash laying around. Most people in the world will not do the things on this list.
Other things it leaves out, like frying food (edit: I'm a moron, it does mention it down the line), or buying furniture or clothes that off-gas VOCs, or living or working in a place with fiberglass-lined air ducts, or using a gas range or oven.
[+] [-] graeme|4 years ago|reply
My biggest hack in this regard: living somewhere with low enough ambient pollution that you can open a window. Say less than 50 pm 2.5 outdoors. This reliably leads to a pm 2.5 of 4 indoors, even with windows shut, as long as I am not cooking poorly.
Then the open window will vent VOCs and CO2. Even a tiny crack of an open window in winter is sufficient. In summer you need more open.
That’s pretty much it, and the rest is making sure not to burn stuff when cooking, which mostly involves keeping the stove clean and not letting anything fall on the burners, and putting hot water in warm pans after cooking.
I measure all of this with an awair, a laseregg, and a co2 monitor. It’s pretty low effort and I feel confident the air quality is good.
If I do mess up while cooking I open windows to vent and put on a mask until it has dissipated. It’s all mostly just background habit now.
[+] [-] briefcomment|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PurpleFoxy|4 years ago|reply
IMO, cities should just ban almost all car traffic from the centres so people can live car free without being poisoned.
[+] [-] pbourke|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] acwan93|4 years ago|reply
Dust and particulates that settle on asphalt will still be a problem though.
[+] [-] ejolto|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adamjb|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nullc|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 3dee|4 years ago|reply
India is an example but in parts of the Netherlands where we have the worst air quality in Europe, we also see this.
It's hard to tell. But having a respiratory disease in an area of bad air quality won't help you.
[+] [-] satellite2|4 years ago|reply
At the same time early in the pandemic I remember reading that being a smoker had a moderate impact in reducing COVID symptoms severity.