Curious About Indoor Air Quality?

Ricky Ng-Adam asks: "The Science Advisory Board of the EPA has 'consistently ranked indoor air pollution among the top five environmental risks to public health'. As most of you are probably spending most of your time indoors like myself, I'd like to know how this affects you and what do you do to deal with it? Is it worth it to buy an air purifier and if so which one?" Also, how well do purifiers deal with common indoor air polution, like smoking...and pet hair/dander (for those of you who spend lots of time working at home)?

Comments

The thing to do...

[Matts]

Is to get both an ioniser and a deioniser and stick them in opposite ends of the room, turn them up to full whack and let them battle it out!

Then in another room, get a humidifier and a dehumidifier and do the same.

Makes for hours of entertainment, far better than Quake.

Re: Yeah! -- find someplace else to live

[InitZero]

I originally began researching the subject because I live in a downtown appartment and the building is so badly built that we smell the cigarette smoke from adjacent rooms.

I realize this is a low-tech solution but have you thought about moving? Your health has got to be worth something, right?

If I were seated in a restaurant next to someone who was smoking, I'd ask to be moved. A long meal is just a couple hours. You're living with smoke. For several hours a day. (Health issues aside, I'm not an anti-smoking freak but I also don't want to have to smell the stuff.)

If you really value your health, move. That will do more good than any electronic gizmo.

If you want some really good tips on how to make your house healthy as well as a good discussion on why modern houses are worse for you than older houses, check out the book Home Comforts : The Art and Science of Keeping House. (Summary: today's houses are air tight and full of germs. Old houses had windows and people actually opened them.) I highly recommend it and it will help you pick up chicks if your into that sort of thing.

InitZero

Re:Who needs all this fancy tech stuff?

[po_boy]

those cages sure can begin to stink.

I found that removing the dead birds helps a lot.

Who needs all this fancy tech stuff?

[Crewd]

I keep canarys in every room of my house. If it dies, I know it's time to leave the room. Last year the bird in my bedroom died and I slept on the couch for a week. The autopsy report came back and explained little birdie died from cancer. I got another bird for the bedroom and am happily sleeping in my bed again. But, I'll tell you what...those cages sure can begin to stink. I wish I had something to make my house smell better. Any slashdot suggestions?

Some Ideas

[TheNightOwl]

• Run Furnace Fan 24/7 (already mentioned - also improves temeprature control)
• Use Pleated Furnace Filters (Filtrete brand works well and reduces dust accumulation) - essential for smokers
• If you don't have a furnace, use a 20x20 pleated filter in front of a 20x20 box fan
• Activated Carbon filters will reduce organic chemicals in the air
• Improved outdoor air exchange will help - but hurts energy efficiency
• Oil Furnaces have more indoor polution potential than Gas. If you have one, keep it tuned
• Run Kitchen Vent when cooking (avoid recirculation type if possible)
• HEPA (High Efficiency Particulate Arrestor) Filter Systems are very expensive, but work well
• A key risk is the particles under 10 microns

open a window

[mr.ska]

Yes, that's right - open a window once in a while. :)

I keep my furnace fan running 24/7 to keep air circulated, but if you're circulating crappy air, what good is that? The solution is to simply crack a window once in a while. You don't need a gale-force wind whipping through to clean all the air out, just enough so that your apartment can "breathe".

A word of warning, however; if you're right downtown, opening a window may simply allow exhaust fumes to come in instead. If there's a lot of air pollution outside, then no matter what you're pretty screwed, and need to go with an actual air filter.

If you like to vacuum, Filter Queen vacuums are actually rated as air purifiers, and the active carbon filter needs only be changed once a year. So each time you vacuum (or just leaving it running on low for a while) it purifies the air. You can get them used/refurbished rather reasonably, if you look in the right places.

Indoor plants will help

[Derwen]

NASA have done a lot of research on this at their John C. Stennis Skylab Space Center. Dr. Wolverton discusses the effect of 50 houseplants in "Eco-Friendly House Plants".

There are many horrors lurking in our homes and offices. Perusal of this article (text-only link here) could lead you to live out your life in a tent. However the "big, bad three" ( formaldehyde, benzene and trichloroethylene) are largely scrubbed from the air by plants. The book referred to above looks at the most effective. You are correct in thinking that Chlorophytum comosum (Thunb.) Jaccques (The spider plant) is particularly useful. An important point is that plants are an effective, low-tech solution, self-replicating and aesthetically-pleasing - this beats expensive, quick-fix high-tech solutions any time.

It should come as no surprise that vascular plants do this so well as they have been cleaning earth's atmosphere for hundreds of millions of years (and much longer in the case of their predecessors).
- Derwen