I’m trying to forget that it says 0.01”.
Still horrible outside, but definitely improved.
It hasn't gone under 81 in my apartment since this whole smoke started; and my office tends to sit at 83 on the ground.
That's because it wasn't necessary until the last 10 years or so. 90 degree days were uncommon and night temps would dip low enough to cool most places in the evening through the next morning.
* any apartment not facing North is going to be experiencing the sun for a LOT of the day during the summer
* most apartments are only facing a single direction, so you can't get through-air to go from one side of the house to the other to pull the cool air from the "not with sun" side.
* Washington houses love big windows that seem to take up a whole side, so it's just heat from the sun all. day. long.
* many apartments are on the second floor, or higher, so heat naturally rises and there is a real consequence to that.
In the winter, I've had to open my window to keep my old apartment under 80 while on the 4th floor with no heaters running (aside from my desktop computer and other normal electronics).
At least I have an air purifier...
I can think of one, small silver lining to these fires:
I recently read that Asian giant hornets had recently been found in the PNW, and if they weren't wiped out in a few years they'd become permanently entrenched. I find that prospect absolutely terrifying, so perhaps we'll get lucky and these fires will wipe them out.
I have 4 (5th is on its way).
They work extremely well and if you pair them with a Temptop AQI sensor you can see how well in real time: https://www.temtopus.com/collections/temtopus-pm2-5-pm10-mon...
Those temptop sensors are great. I've previously had awair, foobot, and purple sensors which all sucked in different ways.
Really long thread about this here: https://www.reddit.com/r/AirQuality/comments/ikf1ed/are_ther...
Everyone keeps saying this when they have been all sold out for the past 10 days.
Also most people don’t enjoy wearing an N95 mask for a long time. Imagine wearing one for 8 hours while trying to sleep because you haven’t been able to get a filter. You can try to close every window and door and such in your house, but no one’s insulation is perfect and the air will get bad after a few hours.
And as a final point, you seem to just fall back on the fact that there are shortages as an indication that there’s nothing to be done, and this will soon be “over” anyway. First of all, you don’t know that, and secondly, if you live in an area where this is happening, it will happen again sooner or later. If you have nothing at home to help you filter the air you’re breathing, at least prepare for next time. Disposable particle masks are not a waste of money, they’re cheap and last forever.
One thing worth mentioning though is that the smoke you smell is volatile organic compounds, and the smoke you see is (I believe) PM10. You're not going to smell or see PM2.5, which is what these HEPA air purifiers are designed to filter. I'm not confident in this, but my intuition is that these smaller PM2.5 particles will find their way into your home more more quickly than the larger PM10 particles will.
Masks: https://pksafety.com/3m-7500-series-half-facepiece-respirato...
Filter: https://pksafety.com/3m-2071-p95-particulate-mask-filter-pai...
In addition to that, loose particle filters as spare parts are not uncommon and you can literally strap any filter on a fan, close your windows and start forcing indoor air through it to improve the ambient air quality.
Went to that link. Tried to order. Glad i read the small text carefully:
"Ships within 28 Business Days"
Yeah...
still, i'm interested in getting a good pm2.5 monitor to pair with my air purifier, as air pollution is a much bigger issue than covid (air pollution certainly affects vast swaths of people across the world, persistently and largely invisibly, and is only getting worse over the decades).
is waiting for the wifi version (currently sold out) worth nearly twice the (sale) price of an m10?
I went with the P10 which does exactly what I want (AQI and PM2.5). It looks nice, it works, and is highly visible from a distance (even has a 6hr battery which makes it easy to move between rooms).
The only other one I'd consider is the one that does CO2.
As a bonus the Temtop sensors are less than half the price of their competitors while being at least twice as good.
* is there a way to view sensor data historically and arbitrarily, preferably off device?
* is there a way to use it to control other devices (possibly via a home automation gateway) like my air purifier?
i see that it can be plugged in for power, but also has a battery, which is a nice feature. does that also allow for data transfer?
My experience with the devices that attempt to do the things you want is that they suck.
They do each of those things poorly and their basic detection functionality (most important feature) is also bad. (The reddit thread I linked to has details).
If a device existed that did those things and was actually good I'd recommend it.
As it is, everything in the market is awful.
At least these Temtops have the basic functionality down and do that part really well.
Coal is made of up of a mixture of aromatic hydrocarbons like a anthracene, naphthalene. These are already toxic to humans. Add metals like mercury, antimony, etc.
Coal smoke is much worse than wood smoke.
Leading to, for example, acid rain.
Also just a guess, coal is a finer particulate matter than wood, I think that might give more particles off. Wood dust, nope, coal dust? Hell no. Also radioactive!
[] - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-....
But yes, the article you linked talks about trace amounts of uranium and other materials that actually could be harmful.
This one is easy to research. I'm not trying to convince you of anything, just being helpful.
PM2.5 pollution, even at levels far lower than being seen now, is associated with literally hundreds of negative outcomes- lower IQ, worse test scores in standardized tests, more depression, worse ADHD, more asthma, more cancers (of both the lungs and other body parts), emphysema, as well as a whole host of issues related to full-body inflammation (ranging from auto-immune disorders to digestive problems).
The issues you're describing are studied after what I'd say is long term exposure. So far it's less than a week. A person with healthy lungs and no related problems will be back to normal if this ceases in a relatively short time. Of course, that doesn't mean we should relax about smoke season becoming a month-long annual event.
They say dosage makes the poison, but duration is important, too.
An evolutionary force that is too strong just kills a species.
Which is thousands of years... about a thousand such thousands.
Edit: I was probably thinking of smokeless coal which is processed to burn more cleanly.
[0]https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/household-a...
I can see how it may be too late for that...
Inhaling smoke is bad for your health, absolutely, but I fail to see many similarities between the two situations.
It's currently giving me 2.3 cigarettes per day, and I live a decent distance away from any of the fires (Sacramento, CA).
Interestingly, the Android package name is indeed com.shitismoke.app
I keep seeing these kinds of conversions (AQI to equivalent cigarettes per day) but I never see numbers on how long you need to be outside for that to be the case. Is it based on assuming someone on the coast (where AC is rare) having to keep their windows open all day? Is it based on 1-2 trips outside per day? How does it incorporate exposure time into the conversion rate?
We screwed up over-preventing fires during the last 100 years and built up a huge tinder box.
Driving at sunrise/sunset reminds me of the original Mad Max. Expect real and depressing.