Is Conference Room Air Making Us Dumber?
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
In a car with air on recirculate, it was getting to >1220 ppm, a level that impairs decision making and lowers brain function. I try to drive with air on fresh from now on.
I don’t doubt the air in our conference room with 20 people gets super high in CO2 as the meeting goes on, and that would explain a lot of the horrible decisions and thought processes that happen in there. :) I’m going to bring my meter to the next meeting and see what it gets to. We are a group of scientists so it won’t be awkward or weird. If nothing else it will spark discussion and reflection on the decisions that are made there.
It has an app (and an API) and monitors CO2, humidity, temp, and VOCs. I like it a lot. For me, it mostly serves as a reminder to open the door for a few minutes before bed and let some fresh air in.
Had I known that before I bought it I wouldn't have done so.
Hasn't arrived yet so I can't comment directly
I got it to monitor CO2 levels in a house without central air. It's pretty amazing how quickly it rises without the air on or a window open. If the air in a room feels "stuffy", it's probably over 1000 ppm.
However, there is a known issue in calibrating the device, as the IR emitter and light sensor change characteristics over time. The calibration requires immersing the device in nitrogen or pure CO2 and is costly and complex. The workaround is to calibrate the device outdoors where there is an assumed 400 ppm CO2.
[1] https://www.co2meter.com/collections/0-1-co2
[2] https://www.epluse.com/en/products/co2-measurement/co2-senso...
https://www.amazon.com/Foobot-Quality-Monitor-Homeowners-Ren...
I believe you can hook it up to IFTTT and turn on the AC etc if levels are high. You can get real time stats, historical reporting...If you don't want to keep looking at your mobile device it will light up if the air quality is bad.
It also has a VOC monitor, which is rare. I have a new construction house and the VOC was pretty much deadly.
More comprehensive - https://www.amazon.com/Awair-2nd-Invisible-Quality-Chemicals...
Cheaper (smart plug version) - https://www.amazon.com/Awair-Glow-Breathe-Quality-Monitor/dp...
There are plants that do pretty well at air filtering, though not as well as a HEPA filter... but for CO2, they won't absorb more than they can use. This means you need dozens, and also that you'd need grow lights to keep them photosynthesizing as fast as possible.
I've seen an office that was built like that, and it was actually a very nice experience. The owner enjoys spending as hour gardening each evening, though, which is important.
Ventilation is the only solution.
https://www.reference.com/science/much-co2-human-exhale-3f8c...
The fastest rate of carbon fixation by any plants are photosynthetic algae eds, which fix u to 4.4 kg of carbon per square meter per year, or 16.3kg CO2/(m^2 * yr).
http://carbon.ycombinator.com/ocean-phytoplankton/
That works out to about 22 m^2 or 240 ft^2 of algae.
Most land plants offer at best about 1/10th this rate, in full sunlight, and far less in indirect, partial, or shaded light.
A lot.
In terms of CO^2 sequestration it doesn't seem implausible to fit a farm of that area in something the size of an apartment..
Of course the energy/water use would be insane, hopefully you could funnel sunlight in, or just open the window. But as a thought experiment that ignores the economics of it think more space station than apartment.
Critically, you need on the order of N m^2 of sunlit area on your culture, not N m^2 of floor space. If you image search "phytoplankton culture" you can see that people grow these in bottles or thin plastic bags under artificial lighting, maximizing the surface area.
You can easily fit 11 m^2 in one square meter like that under standard 250 cm ceiling height. Just have a stack every 20 cm.
The 4.4 kg I gave was carbon, the 16.3 kg CO2. Your 9.16 kg refers to CO2, fixed per square meter per year, which is less than the CO2 fixation value I'd used. That is, http://carbon.ycombinator.com are making a more conservative estimate of about 56% the maximum observed rate. That increases rather than decreases the required area.
At 9.63 kg/(m^2yr) you'd need 39.8 m^2, or 429 ft^2, of algae to offset one person's CO2 exhalation.
Using GNU units:
You have: (1kg/day)/(9.16 kg/(m^2*yr))
You want: m^2
* 39.873602
/ 0.025079249
You have: (1kg/day)/(9.16 kg/(m^2*yr))
You want: ft^2
* 429.19589
/ 0.0023299385
You have: 9.16/16.3
You want: %
* 56.196319
/ 0.01779476
> We will be conservative and say that our algal beds fix 2.5 kg of C per square meter per year and 2.5 kg of C works out to 9.167 kg of CO2.
But then a couple of paragraphs later:
> the maximum CO2 assimilation rate of algal beds which we will say is 9.167 kg of C per square meter per year.
I.e. they first mention a conservative "2.5 kg of C" in the context of the ocean, followed by a "maximum rate". 9 kg of carbon is around 33 kg of CO^2.
Maybe they meant "kg of CO2" in that second paragraph, it's certainly suspicious that it repeats the same 9.167 number, but why would they call that number both "conservative" and "maximum assimilation rate", hrm...
When we see science fiction movies and there is a tiny little area with plants that is supposed to be providing the multi-person crew with CO2 scrubbing and O2 generation, I think the size needed is vastly underestimated.
>A human breathes about 9.5 tonnes of air in a year, but oxygen only makes up about 23 percent of that air, by mass, and we only extract a little over a third of the oxygen from each breath. That works out to a total of about 740kg of oxygen per year. Which is, very roughly, seven or eight trees' worth.
from- https://www.sciencefocus.com/planet-earth/how-many-trees-doe...
Bio-dome is a movie based on the premise.
Practically speaking, that means a bunch of succulents.
It sounds like you misunderstood my original comment.
Edit: welp sometimes you learn English as your first language for the second time and today is that day for me
I think the verb you're looking for is breathe. Breath is a noun.
Some sources suggest recirc for heavy traffic -- I'd prefer a good filtration system.
And for rapidly heating or cooling a car, recirc can help. My preference is to open windows & sunroof (where present) to flush out hot air first, in hot weather. In cold weather, the heater won't kick in until the engine has warmed up, so recirc before that buys you little. And recirc + heat can result in fogged windows, so you may want to turn in the AC as well to rduce humidity. (Many cars now activate AC when defrost is selected.)
I rarely keep recirculated air set for more than a minute or two, most often far less.
I've questioned why fresh is even there (seems unlikely co2 would be the reason) - it's always going to be less efficient and you can open a window if you want fresh air.
Anecdotally I feel fine driving for 2 hours straight in recirculated air with closed windows.
Also in heating mode, there's little reason not to use fresh, as we can heat up cars really easily.
Leave it on recirculate unless you are defrosting your windows.
The teachers had a love/hate relationship with this plan.
I’m not sure it was an improvement: the blowers were noisy and made the classrooms much less comfortable (colder in winter, warmer in summer; it was an older school and the HVAC systems weren’t great). Teachers constantly talked about how they wanted to destroy the blowers. I seriously doubt grades improved. I wonder how previous students managed before our enlightened times.
My landlord at my old place was always adding new insulation. Co2 levels there would get really high with windows shut. My new apartment has much lower ambient co2. Both were built 100 years ago.
I think people also used to leave windows open a bit, even in winter. My (Canadian) grandma always did, and I hear it was the custom in Germany.
Modern buildings are made to be hermetically sealed.
At least when I went to school it was almost impossible to keep a window open except on the hottest days of summers because inevitably n>1 [almost always] girls would start to complain about draft. (edit: is draft in a room with only one opening to the outside a social construct?)
That being said I always keep the window open in my office. There is no draft.
I even remember wearing sweaters indoors when I was young. I assumed that was an effort to save money during the so-called Energy Crisis (better described as a shortage of cheap oil), but it may have just been the natural reaction to inefficient heaters and the building standards at the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blower_door
We used to assume that you’d get enough fresh air from infiltration through accidental sources. With a better sealed building, that’s not always the case and you may need to deliberately bring in outside air. Heat recovery ventilation systems help to do this more efficiently than the inadvertent leaking method.
Do heat pumps ventilate? I have one in my new apartment and co2 seemed higher when it was off. But I was told they are not hrv systems. Maybe the blowing fan just caused more air circulation.
Since the climate is moderate where we live, what's been suggested to me is to just run the recirculate fan often/always, and to use bathroom exhaust fans to control fresh air turnover. (As built our bathroom fans are hooked up to a central humidity sensor, and will turn on when house humidity reaches a set level (as well as being able to turn them on in the bathrooms). I'm actually curious whether something exists, or I could rig something up, to turn them on based on CO2 levels as well.
I know of at least one case where a family was killed because they were using a laser cutter on wood indoors in a well sealed building and the small levels of CO released were able to build up to lethal levels.
I think the high levels before led to worse behavior and lower academic performance. Both seem generally better now.
Fun fact: We've known since ~1850[1] that we should probably stay below 1000ppm for indoors, but we based the measure back then on body odor :) (It still bugs me that oddly cognitive impairment starts at the same point a body-odor measure from the 1800s put CO2 levels, and I keep wondering if we're seeing confirmation bias in action)
In general, where you end up is based on airflow. To get below 800ppm, you'll probably need to increase outside ventilation to >10dm^3/s.
[1] von Pettenkofer, "Ueber den Luftwechsel in Wohngebaeuden"
That said, I doubt humanity spent enough time in caves or other restricted airflow environments for such a response to evolve...
This article about one of the few remaining hunter-gatherer people left, the Hadza, might lead you to question the idea that humans have a "dislike body odor" trait:
> While Hadza have a word for body odor, the men tell me that they prefer their women not to bathe—the longer they go between baths, they say, the more attractive they are. Nduku, my Hadza language teacher, said she sometimes waits months between baths, though she can't understand why her husband wants her that way.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2009/12/hadza/
And this despite the theory that hunter-gatherers are probably even better at smelling than we are: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/01/180118142744.h...
The idea of ‘cave man’ is sampling bias because natural caves preserve ancient artifacts which tend to disappear in the open.
Ever since then I've made sure to set my AC system to run the "house fan" for 15 minutes or so every hour at night just to circulate the air in the house, and while the numbers went down significantly, anecdotally I swear that I wake up easier in the mornings now.
Another surprising place that really high CO2 concentrations show up? The inside of full face motorcycle helmets when at a stop. IIRC they quickly reach as high as 20,000ppm! There is also some speculation that full-face motorcycle helmets that stay closed in an accident are more dangerous in some ways, as the high CO2 concentrations in the helmet can be really dangerous to an unconscious person's brain function.
And for opening the visor in accidents, I'm no expert but I believe it would be safe to do if you can do it without moving their head. IIRC the reason you don't want to take off the helmet is because you could strain their neck doing so. If you could move the visor without moving their head, it probably won't hurt, but at the same time I'm not sure if I'd worry about that in this kind of situation (having seen a motorcycle accident, the amount of co2 that person is breathing is, to me anyway, far down the list behind "call 911" and "make sure they don't get run over again").
I think the findings were more to try and get the helmet manufacturers to design systems which let more air in during an accident or when stopped.
[1] has the study I remember reading about, and it turns out that according to their abstract, opening the visor at a stop has little effect on average! So maybe my behaviour of cracking the visor isn't doing much...
At least here in Germany this advice is considered outdated and people in (mandatory for driving) first aid courses get taught a simple technique to remove a helmet safely (ideally with two people).
Reason being is that with the helmet on it is harder to monitor breathing and impossible / very difficult to do CPR, and the helmet will also interfere with the stable side position.
- a big concern around pathogens - always have gloves with you and put them on when administering first aid especially if the person is bleeding; use a mouth dam for mouth to mouth and if you don’t have one don’t do mouth to mouth, just chest compressions, etc
- training first aid responders around what to do when a person needing medical attention tells them not to help because they don’t have health insurance (this point was repeated numerous times by the EMT training us, saying it was routine for them to have to deal with it)
If they can move on their own, then they can get to the clinic of their choice themselves if and when they choose to; if they can't (which can be caused by anything from a sprained ankle to a fractured hip) then they still may prefer to be delivered to the hospital by family&friends or a taxi instead of paying thousands for an ambulance delivery.
it seems other than for the first point the question only becomes relevant after any relevant first-aid actions are completed.
i have been in a situation where a guy fell out of his wheelchair. he wasn't injured, he just could not get back into his wheelchair and he was to heavy for any of us to help him without us risking to drop him in the process which might have then actually risked an injury. he looked like the kind of person who might not have had insurance. though he didn't make any statement about that and no-one even considered that to be an issue. we saw no choice but to call 911, which sent an ambulance with people who could help (and they knew him too).
i wonder now how we would have reacted if he had told us that he has no insurance. we might have been looking for alternative help with an outcome that could have been good or bad.
with that in mind i'd think other than for the reasons you mentioned the statement should be ignored.
I knew someone (in California) who crashed his bicycle on a curb in front of a number of people. He picked himself up and had a bloody but minor wound on his arm. But overall he was unharmed, just some surface bleeding.
"Of course" multiple people called 911, and an ambulance arrived in short order. He had insurance, but he wasn't interested in getting in an ambulance, he wanted to look after his bike while wrapping up his light wound, and then treating it later.
I'm told the exchange was awkward to say the least.
Point being, medical cultures can differ quite a lot, even from locality to locality, and the differences can be seen even in the handling of minor scrapes.
Also big (area wise) skin wounds can get infected even if they are not bleeding.
My grandpa taught me that; to let wounds bleed freely for a while, if possible, to reduce the chance of infection.
I wonder how valid that is.
- Mouth-to-nose is usually better than mouth-to-mouth, at least when there is no obstructions (like bleeding, broken nose, snot, etc).
- If you're doing chest compressions, expect a high probability of breaking a few ribs. Don't stop, as it is highly unlikely the ribs will break "inwards" and puncture a lung, and a broken rib is still better than being dead.
- Remove all clothing from the chest area you're working during CPR. Yes, that includes bras, specifically. The reason being that any clothes will hurt your hands/rip your gloves (if you have some)/shave the skin off your hand especially when you have to do CPR for 15mins. Bras in particular often have wires etc in them that will hurt your hands even worse. As one of the EMTs training us put it: "Don't be shy, no time for false modesty, it may cost a life."
- Don't forget to breath when giving mouth-to-*. Also, don't forget to actually lift your head when you breath. Else you will just breath in the spent air again that you and the person you're helping just exhaled. Given that CPR is very physically taxing, according to the EMTs it is quite common for people giving the CPR to faint themselves if they breath incorrectly.
- It is more important to call for help than to do CPR. Always call first, if you're alone. And stay on the phone until you're being told you can get off the line. Apparently a lot of people either do not call, or call, scream some stuff into the phone, then hang up to administer help, often forgetting to tell crucial details like their location because it is such a high stress situation.
- Defibrillators do not actually restart hearts that stopped beating. They essentially stop the heart in order to reboot it in hopes it will restart with a proper pace/rhythm.
Or it may cost the rescuer quite a bit when a woman regains consciousness half-naked with a man on top of her.
At the end of the day, would you rather let a woman in need of CPR die because you are afraid of maybe getting sued, with an even smaller chance of a conviction?
People feel often ashamed, can feel humiliated, violated, happy, sad, or anything their want, but they have to understand that CPR means that 1) you life is at risk and 2) some stranger(s) will put their mouth in yours and their hands near your breasts for some time. Period of time that can last for many minutes or even hours. Often longer than the duration of most violations. There is often a legal obligation to do it for some people. To pass and quit the area is not an option.
Sorry but there is no time to find a young sexually acceptable partner for you to happily wake up in her/his arms and upload your booze adventure to instagram, forever-happy style. Deal with it. There is nothing sexually arousing in the experience for the rescuers about your vomit taste or about your body leaking different kinds of fluids over yourself. Not even remotely.
full face helmets can at times have the same effect if you bundle up to well during winter but I would be loathe to give it up
I used to ride with a just-a-bit opened visor because it was so hot in the city, with all the traffic and all, (and the beard didn't help the air flow) so I ended with eye infection because of the dust ingress. So I just bought one with better vents (and audio). Worth every $ even though I had to patch the audio circuitry a bit.
Maybe you should consider upgrading.
It seems that any sort of face covering or even significant exercise could raise your ambient CO2 level well above 1000ppm.
I'm a bit surprised that levels 38-60x below our exhalation % (and it's not lack of O2, because you use up less than 10%/breath) has such a significant effect. The one thing that may drive it is that the efficiency of lung ab/desorption goes roughly as the square of concentration so a 2% change in CO2 concentration might be enough to have an effect on O2 and blood pH.
I'd argue that if there is an effect here it isn't the O2 concentration since a 1% change in atmospheric pressure happens at about 275ft. That's a pretty small hill!
A 1000ppm change in 02 partial pressure happens in about 30C temperature change. Really, if this is a real effect it better be actually due to some effect of C02 concentration.
So unless you're willing to go the illegal route through Sci-Hub, I'm afraid you're out of luck.
Depending on your climate, this could significantly raise the humidity in your house. Reason is that moisture from the AC coil are wet after the AC turns off. Typically drips off into the pan until next time AC cycles.
If you run the fan you will then evaporate into the air circulating some of the moisture just removed.
Part of my home automation system is humidity sensors as well, and while they do spike over 65% sometimes (probably when we have the windows open), they stay around 55% to 60% for the past 30 days. Since I'm only running that fan cycle at night, when the AC tends not to run or not run as much, I'm guessing that helps mitigate the effects of that.
I ask because I have a heat pump for cooling/heating, but the furnace is the blower. I thought when the fan ran, it pulled from the outdoor intake which is in a very different location from the actual heat pump coils.
Thoughts?
What was interesting is how fast the ppm increases when someone enters the room. I would plot the data and see a blip on the graph when I entered. It was within seconds of entering.
Something to research. I'm not an expert, just someone who recently did some shopping for CO2 monitors for my home.
So most cheap CO2 monitors are actually just oxygen monitors that aren't actually measuring the CO2 levels but are measuring the drop in O2 levels and extrapolating from there.
I don't know if that matters for what you might want to use them for, but it's something to be aware of.
I don't have mine any more, I actually borrowed it from a friend and it was a fairly expensive one (like in the $200 range) that he was using for some other stuff.
Yes but no helmet is even worse for an unconscious person's brain function :)
I just thought it was a very interesting study and that helmet manufacturers could possibly find ways to mitigate it.
Any recommendations on CO2 monitors?
It's a greenhouse CO2 monitor, which is the most common kind. I've heard that they're not as accurate as CO2 monitors that are designed for humans, but those tend to be much more expensive.
In evolutionary terms, you could speculate that the nice feeling of fresh air could be an instinctual response directing the organism to seek higher quality air.
This is something I used to do almost on instinct,usually at lower speeds (because the helmet had a sort of an intake and a vent that worked well at higher speeds).
I can't imagine how it is in any "van dweller" or "tiny house" place.
If you drive motorcycle, you can get 10 000ppm in your helmet, that is close to being out of mind.
Story of my life right there
The levels of constant radiation we are being subjected to on a daily basis are just off the charts in urban environments.
The US Navy's submarines are run with CO2 levels varying from 300-11,300ppm.[1] The military did plenty of studies in the 60s and 70s and failed to find significant cognitive effects in environments as high as 4% CO2.[2]
> Thus, CO2 at 40,000 ppm for 2 weeks did not affect performance on multiple tests of cognitive function in physically fit young airmen, a population probably not unlike submariners.
> A number of studies suggest that CO2 exposures in the range of 15,000-40,000 ppm do not impair neurobehavioral performance. Schaefer (1961) reported that 23 crewmen exposed to CO2 at 15,000 ppm for 42 days in a submarine showed no psychomotor testing effects but showed moderate increases in anxiety, apathy, uncooperativeness, desire to leave, and sexual desire.
> In a 5-day exposure of seven subjects at a CO2 concentration of 30,000 ppm, Glatte et al. (1967) reported no effects on hand steadiness, vigilance, auditory monitoring, memory, or arithmetic and problem solving performance.
> CO2 exposure did not affect performance on the tracking task or any of the six RPM subtests (Storm and Giannetta 1974).
There's also an argument from biology. When sitting around, people exhale 4-5% CO2. That's 40,000-50,000ppm. An extra 2,000ppm is far less than the variance across a typical breath, and it won't increase ppCO2 in the blood stream nearly as much as standing up and walking around. If CO2 hurt cognition as badly as these studies claim, then even minor physical exertion should turn people into drooling idiots.
It's for these reasons that I am extremely skeptical of the recent claims about CO2 impairing cognition.
In fact, inadeqate air quality was one of the three main reasons (two other being interruptions and commute time) that drove me to exclusively remote work 10 years ago. It took a lab-grade CO2 detector and some references to half-century old health standards to make the first step, but it worked.
That's barely a few hours worth of breathing in a typical office setting.
Sounds like a good recipe for poor decision making, AKA dumber.
There is a CO2 sensor on my desk for 10 years already. Generally it is around 650 ppm during a working day but occasionally the building's ventilation system's power trips and air movement suddenly decreases. This causes CO2 levels to rise fast - once they hit 900-1000 ppm, I can definitely feel a decrease in my ability to focus and think clearly (and yes, I feel it even before looking at the numbers, ha!).
Obviously silly single anecdote but subjectively the link is very strong for me!
PS. On a sad note is that I remember the days when coming to work in the morning meant the CO2 level was at 350 ppm. These days clean air is 450 ppm in this city!
It might be that CO2 in the air is simply a proxy.
My personal observation is that usually good air quality is reached when CO2 levels are around 600-1000 ppm. Lower it is fresher the air feels.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/pPZ27eZdBXtGuLqZC/what-is-up...
Maybe I'm missing it but it seems like most of the studies I click on there see an effect at CO2 levels that are much less than tens of thousands ppm.
Gwern has this to say about the Navy studies-
"they often were not using sensitive tests of higher cognitive functioning, a broad array of different measurements, and very small sample sizes; I suspect a meta-analysis grouping tasks by domain with some correction for ceiling effects might turn in a very different conclusion than their fairly sanguine conclusion that there are no cognitive impairments <40000PPM and <25000PPM is a perfectly safe limit. (Oddly enough, I came across this book on an anti-global-warming site; apparently Satish et al 2012 is really just global warming propaganda scare tactics, because the Navy has proven that CO2 is perfectly safe.)"
I mean the Navy has a very vested interest in saying "submarine CO2 levels are fine" which makes me suspicious from the outset. If other studies corroborated their claims I'd find it more believable.
If what you say is true then there is an almost unprecedented level of being wrong and conspiracy in the current accepted rules and limits for CO2 in indoor air quality. Not to mention the fact that Wikipedia is dead wrong. That seems unlikely.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indoor_air_quality#Carbon_diox...
"The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) considers that indoor air concentrations of carbon dioxide that exceed 1,000 ppm are a marker suggesting inadequate ventilation."
It would be quite bizarre for NIOSH, a division of the CDC to be 15-40x off on how much CO2 is acceptable indoors. I'm assuming like most government regulatory bodies they looked at many studies and formed a consensus about what is safe using the available literature.
I unfortunately do not have a paper but I did find an article about it and it seems they've deployed it in real life with success: https://www.architectmagazine.com/technology/breathe-in-case...
I didn't mean "why don't you just open a window."
<rant>
I searched for why people do this 1337-substitution [1], and apparently the justification's that "C02" can be quicker to type on some mobile keyboards since "0" is a single press while "O" requires hitting Shift too.
But in chemistry, we'd often write chemical formulae in linear format. For example, "H2O" is water while "C6H12O6" refers to some simple sugars. The basic rule is that digits after any letters are in a subscript position, while digits before any letters are a scalar multiplicand.
So, when I see "C02", I immediately parse it to "{C}_{02}" rather than "{C0}_{2}". This reduces to "{C}_{2}", which obviously doesn't make sense, so then I have to figure out what's going on. Obviously it's not too tough to figure out from context that "CO2" was meant, but since I have to infer that from context rather than from direct parsing, it comes off as an obnoxious typo. For example, if someone wrote "C2O", I could figure out what they meant from context too, but it's still annoying to have to be like, "What?".
Then I don't even know why it exists. I mean, who talks about CO2 so much more than other chemical species to memorize a 1337-alteration that saves them having to hit a Shift key? It seems like a rather niche micro-optimization that certainly can't be worthwhile to too many typists, even if we ignore the obnoxiousness it imposes on readers.
Which, tl;dr, my point's just that "C02" might be a cute 1337 substitution if you don't usually read a lot of chemical formulae, but if you do, it invokes a parsing error that you either have to consciously resolve or else memorize a new slang term to avoid.
</rant>
Healthy Workers is a Amsterdam-based startup that measures thing such as: air quality, CO2 and consented employee data (e.g. their sleep and focus) and makes an analysis what parts of the building have an unconductive work environment and how this can be improved.
Conference rooms with bad air are the first problem they look at.
They are hiring for a head of sales and a product designer: https://healthyworkers.recruitee.com/
In fact this is probably one of the undisputed pros of an open office, the air quality is most of the times quite good.
That's basically because Larry Page really, really cares about it. He's kinda like your friend with a Kubrick obsession that can't stop bringing up facts:
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/727189428142235648
He was on to something! Jokes aside, I think he just has a heightened sense of smell and that's why he had air filters stronger than law requirements installed everywhere, at least in Mountain View.
Quite possible. I have a very strong sense of smell ever since I started hormone replacement therapy and it's driving me crazy how people can put up with some bad smells.
- I can pinpoint mold with a surprising accuracy -- it's everywhere, you'd be scared.
- I can tell when a bathroom is not properly ventilated -- had the office test it out and they changed the entire air ventilation system of that part of the building because it was not up to code.
- I could even smell if the driver in front of me is smoking in their windows closed car while I'm driving behind it with my own windows closed -- changed my air filters.
I'm absolutely certain that a lot of buildings are lacking in air quality and if I were the owner of any industrial or commercial building I'd make sure to invest in top quality air filter.
Imagine if we started holding board meetings, etc outdoors and we fixed all our problems. Maybe an idea for a book?
The monarch traditionally does not sit, and therefore nobody else can, ensuring the meetings remain short.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privy_Council_of_the_United_Ki...
Once you have an umbrella and decent enough temperatures (and/or proper clothing), the effect is lost.
Even in the short term it would be interesting to see if it affects any education metrics.
Attributed this to the richer environment of nature, but it turns out that there is scientific research that finds a correlation between cognitive ability and airflow: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S036013231...
Short answer: yes.
I now am very conscious about keeping a door open and getting some fresh air into the room. This is a challenge in modern, well-insulated buildings in Florida in the summer.
That's worrying. Did you let them know? What was their reaction?
They are usually triggered by a timer or humidity, but it would be also possible to trigger them based on VOC or CO2 levels.
Single-room heat recovery ventilation units are relatively affordable (about $400). There are also some which can be integrated into the window frame if drilling a 6" hole into a wall isn't an option.
Boston winters sometimes make cracking open windows impractical, but if you're in a typical old multi-unit building with old steam/water centrally-controlled heating, there's a good chance that your unit is too warm anyway (though some other units might be too cold). I've heard that some of these old heating systems were even designed assuming cracked-open windows.
The main downsides I'm aware of to open windows here usually are outside noise and seasonal pollen. For the pollen, you can run an air filter and HEPA vacuum robot and/or (supposedly) install special window screen material for the pollen. If you're in a very noisy area, that sometimes means opening and closing window based on noise at the time. If outside noise at night or early morning can be bad where you are, that might mean frontloading bedroom fresh air in the evening before bed, but shutting window before bed.
I don't know about air pollution from fossil fuels, industrial, etc.
In any case it has little effect on heating bills. My canadian grandma actually used to have a window cracked open all winter, and she was rather frugal. My own heating bills changed little since I started.
I wonder how expensive that would be.
Can anyone confirm if they are actually measuring co2 directly? Some people in this thread say actual co2 sensors are more expensive than this.
You can expect them to push back and cite OSHA guidelines [1]
I plan on doing that for my place.
I found some good information though[0], and the smallest form factor (CozIR-LP) retails at $109 [1].
[0] https://www.co2meter.com/blogs/news/6010192-how-does-an-ndir...
[1] https://www.co2meter.com/products/cozir-lp-ambient-air-co2-s...
Yes! It's possible. But the air circulation inside a smartphone is limited and newer phones are completely sealed for waterproofing, so there are still some doubts.
> How are CO2 sensors built?
Based on my very limited experience on playing with electronics, I would say...
1. Previously, many CO2 sensors use an electrochemical process, the chemical cell in the sensor reacts with air, and outputs an analog voltage proportional to the gas concentration. They are large, have a distinct cylindrical shape similar to a microphone module, needs manual calibration, and common in the industry. For example, have a look at the datasheet of MG811 sensor, which mentioned how the chemistry works: https://sandboxelectronics.com/files/SEN-000007/MG811.pdf
2. NDIR sensors is another traditional option. Inside a large rectangular blackbox, it has an infrared LED and some electronics. Basically, you shoot a beam of infrared light though the air and detect it on the other end, and correlate your measurement with the gas concentration. NDIR is reasonably accuracy, very popular in the industry, and can detect particulate air pollutants, and many types of gas. As an example, take a look at the MH-Z16 datasheet: https://sandboxelectronics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Z1...
3. It's now possible to build an all-in-one digital gas sensor on a piece of semiconductor chip! Examples include:
* CCS811, it has an on-die sensor that detects VOCs and CO2 concentration, and even includes a microcontroller that speaks I2C. And it only costs 5.76 USD each per 1000 pieces. Datasheet: https://cdn.sparkfun.com/assets/learn_tutorials/1/4/3/CCS811...
All the three CO2 sensors I've mentioned are available on sale from Adafruit and Sparkfun for anyone who's interested to experiment with.
Curious where you are getting those figures from. Looking at the usual suspects (newark, digikey, sparkfun etc...) gives figures like $5-20 a piece (even at bulk).
Ive run into this before with some hobbyist electronics (high fov IR LEDs) where the prices were much higher than one would expect.
edit: I meant to say the cost is 5.76 USD each per 1000 pieces, I should've been clear. In the industry, it's common to quote the price as "1k price", which is the 1 pcs price per a bunch of 1000 pcs.
https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/ams/CCS811B-JOPD500?qs=...
> I've run into this before with some hobbyist electronics (high fov IR LEDs) where the prices were much higher than one would expect.
Hobbyist electronics are more expensive than the raw price, sometimes an order of magnitude, mainly because they're not mass-produced. If the part is expensive, this effect is there. But usually the cheaper the part, the stronger the effect.
In electronics mass-production, when you already have a PCB and you add a new chip, the cost is often close to the chip itself.
On the other hand, a breakout board or a devboard usually only has few chips on the board, sometimes nothing more than the soldered chip, with a voltage regulator and some pull-up resistors for "plug-and-play" experiments. Also, they are produced in small quantity so the cost cannot be low, and finally vendors like Sparkfun usually sell them to the hobbyists at a premium. For hobbyists, the point is to have something ready to work with, plus it's increasing impractical to solder some chips by yourself due to the increasingly small footprints, and anyway, even if you are gonna run a production, you need to see how it works first. So these hobbyists electronics are more expensive compared to the cost in the industry.
ps. This is just more damning evidence to add to the case against working in an office as opposed to remotely.
800ppm is looking plausible by 2100, though, unless we take major steps to curb emissions.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D5_zaDzWwAActB6?format=jpg&name=...
Then again, wonder what it'd be like in the average subway train or something. Even with decent ventilation systems it feels like the issue would be worse in a packed train/station during rush hour, though the effects would be limited due to no one actually doing any work there.
I work at home now, and while my home is well sealed, I always try to crack the window in my office to let in some fresh air. I'll have to make an effort to do that even when the weather isn't as nice.
Sealed rooms only work with mechanical ventilation. Sealed room without proper ventilation is a design failure.
2. Learn the distinct odor of fear. Pinpoint the source.
3. Ask everyone to pull their own fingers before the meeting begins.
4. If you have a video whiteboard, train the camera on it with a bit of zoom and give your presentation in front of it so your moving form is surrounded by a throbbing infinity of fractal shapes.
5. Place a slow incrementing digital up-counter on the table and say it's a CO2 sensor.
There are heat-exchanging air exchangers for high-efficiency construction. I'm not aware of (and don't find) humidity exchanges, though they may exist.
Hung dampened linens (towels, bedsheets) can make a big difference. Many HVAC systems offer high-efficiency humidifiers, and the old standbye of having a kettle on the stove can work (with an energy cost).
Humidity in general is fairly cheaply acquired. Dehumidifying moist air takes much more energy.
(yes I know this is not a practical solution)
His wife was literally being poisoned by the off-gassing in their new home. A relatively inexpensive air quality detector (Awair) now helps them keep tabs on things.
I've got an Awair in my office, and love it. When CO2 gets too high, I step out and work from my porch.
For those asking about house plants, the answer in my experience is that they don't make a difference. You have to have a lot of plants to offset the CO2 that you produce.
Would love to see what the numbers are for a rush hour subway car in NYC. Can imagine it's a great way to juice your brain before the start of a workday.
No, the stuff we do in conference rooms is making us dumber.
Other than buying oxygen-producing plants (which tend to die on me when my back is turned) I'm not sure how to alleviate the situation.
But if you want to be sure, you can get a decent co2 monitor for less than $100. I use this one: https://www.amazon.com/Hydrofarm-Autopilot-Desktop-Monitor-L...
People on this thread mention co2 monitors can't be so cheap, but I'm under the impression this is actually measuring co2 and not o2/vocs. Can anyone confirm?
You're likely living there as your economic circumstances compel it. I would say that if the sensor shows a high co2 number, you should carefully consider all options you have in your life and see if there is any way out of this situation.
If the studies are correct about high co2's effect on cognition, sleep etc then this home environment is likely contributing to keeping you in whatever situation you struggle to escape from.
(If $90 is too much, you can perhaps borrow one from someone local)
I spend all day in the office with windows looking on a parking lot with two intersections nearby. Considering how much it always stinks of car exhaust right outside, I have a strong suspicion that ventilation that everyone so praises here might not be all that beneficial. But $100+ for CO2 detector is too expensive for where I live.
There are tons of papers on this subject (thanks Sci-Hub!), but the results they report vary so much that it is difficult to draw any conclusions.
My guess is you’re right, and in your local area ventilation may not help. Though it depends on distance from the road. Dissipation happens fairly quickly with distance iirc.
Haven’t been able to test at a freeway, mm co2 meter requires an electric outlet.
NO! we were already dumb before the meeting.
I do think this area is understudied. It's just that being afraid of the air supply is such an easy way to nocebo yourself.
The lowest number this article talks about being bad is 945ppm. A ppm of 600 is discussed as "fairly low" co2 levels. They are clearly not boohooing over the entire range of 1-2000.
OP spoke with rather more certainty than warranted.
Wouldn't you? Won't you subconsciously notice and want to end the meeting faster?
Imagine breathing at an elevated rate in a crowded room that lacks proper ventilation. There's more than co2 coming from the human body. People will begin sweating, farting, etc., and fill the air with all kinds of pollutants. The computers, screens, dry erase board, etc. will make the situation even worst.
I know that such a room will make me want to make quick decisions to leave quickly.
Your description makes me think of the opening scene from Falling Down.[0]
My point is that a crowded room likely has more than one causes which could explain why productivity is lowered and decisions making worsened.
You won't notice an autonomic response but your brain likely will and it might very well answer by releasing adrenaline, cortisol, etc., and make you more anxious and stressed to encourage you to leave the environment that is causing the increased breathing rates.
Edit: for the non-stewards of History that have no idea what I'm talking about: http://digg.com/video/what-was-the-open-air-movement-and-how...