Air pollution linked to higher risk of irreversible sight loss | Hacker News Reader

Air pollution linked to higher risk of irreversible sight loss

theguardian.com

149 pointsrustoo40 comments

I really think that 20-30 years from now, pollution will be linked as the cause of the new world of stupid and crazy.

Microplastics, air pollution, water contamination and poor diet are going to be seen the same way lead now is.

Whenever air pollution comes up, I think about this study:

https://www.vox.com/2020/1/8/21051869/indoor-air-pollution-s...

Basically, false alarm about a nearby gas leak led to putting air filters in classrooms. And "math scores went up by 0.20 standard deviations and English scores by 0.18 standard deviations, and the results hold up even when you control for 'detailed student demographics, including residential ZIP Code fixed effects that help control for a student’s exposure to pollution at home.'" This is "comparable in scale to some of the most optimistic studies on the potential benefits of smaller class size."

This was an area that didn't have high levels of pollution, either. So, 1) in worse areas you'd expect bigger gains, and 2) even if your area isn't "bad" it's still having an impact.

Pollution is invisibly doing weird things to our brains, especially children, without us realizing it. Even just taking the TEST in a filtered room raises scores!

How about pollen allergies? I estimate being under a minor allergic state that is hard to notice while taking your test doesn’t help anything.

Relatedly I often think about the Lead–Crime Hypothesis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis

While tough to ever formally prove, the hypothesis posits that the major problems in the 70s/80s with urban crime that trailed off quickly in 90s was as much caused/worsened by leftover lead in urban environments from the mistakes of leaded gasoline as any other factor.

Pollution has been a great "unseen" evil in a lot of the 19th and 20th Centuries, and its amazing given how many secondary effects we can point to that there's any debate at all remaining on efforts to fix pollution issues.

One should also not forget high CO2 developments in classrooms and its impact on test scores. We measured these in a school last year and it regularly went above 3000ppm [1].

Studies show cognitive impacts already at relatively low increases. So the atmospheric CO2 build up could also in the long term impact our cognitive performance.

[1] https://www.airgradient.com/blog/2020/02/07/we-measured-the-...

Air pollution has already been linked to a number of ailments like heart disease, cancer, asthma, dementia/Alzheimer's, it's certainly not the only cause but it's contribution is significant. Health care costs are something that are rarely discussed when we talk about the costs of fossil fuels but they are significant and costly in both lives and dollars.

The polluters aren't the ones paying the increased medical costs. That's the problem.

I’d argue that we are the polluters and we are the people who pay the medical costs. It’s up to us. And lobbying for more regulation is mostly cope; feels good but at most achieves maybe second order effects. The frog boil continues.

I mentioned it in previous posts. We have easy to use open hardware and software build instructions [1] for an air quality monitor based on a Wemos D1 mini. More than happy to help anybody who wants to build one. I have some PCBs left and can sent them to you (will only charge the postage). Feel free to contact me if you interested.

[1] https://www.airgradient.com/diy/

That looks fun. if its your site the 'Plantower PMS5003 PM Sensor' link says it can't be shipped to the USA, presumably there are other vendors on aliexpress who do.

That's awesome!

I run a little community monitor for my little community in Gary, IN. https://millerbeach.community.

I track PM2.5/10 with a PurpleAir, but want to start tracking other pollutants/gases/VOCs, but there is no consumer-grade equipment, and I wish I could afford the $5k purchase + $1-3000 per year rental of the scientific-grade equipment from Ambilabs, EarthSense, or Kunak.

I see this is PM2.5 + CO, is it possible to add other sensors to it, too?

Yes. The pcb board actually has through holes to connect other sensors to unused IOs and you can easily adjust the software because it is open source.

This is great! Thanks for the hard work. How can I contact you for the PCBs?

The is a contact us button on the website. Just use that.

Awesome project thanks!

I did a dual indoor/outdoor homebrew weather/air quality sensor at the beginning of last summer. Very useful during the smoke season. Wayy less polished though!

https://partofthething.com/thoughts/weather-and-air-quality-...

Very nice project! I have a question on the light and sound sensor you use. Are these able to output calibrated values eg in Lux and dB?

Well I get the raw data in a ESP8266 at which point I could certainly transform it using various calibration curves on the way to the (Home Assistant-based) dashboard.

I've wondered if air quality was an issue where I live but wanted to also be able to do something about it so I bought and air purifier with an air quality sensor (Winix D480). It mostly kicks up in the morning but I have no idea what is causing it to think the air quality is bad. For those who've gotten a real sensor how do you track what's actually causing the air quality issues so you can do something about it? I live close (1400ft / 444m) to a major highway so I've wondered if that could be a "source" but no idea how to tell.

I’ve got both - air purifier with a 2.5pm readout. Plus a separate sensor that does 2.5 and 10pm.

Things that trigger it - mainly cooking. Even normal cooking can shoot levels to 4x WHO recommended.

After that I’ve found that moisture can be picked up too. Ie shower. And finally on cold nights opening windows. Cause wood and gas heating by others

Does it say what type of pollutant? PM2.5 is very different from SO2 which is different from O3, etc.

SO2 and O3 sensors are very expensive, so almost all sensors made for homes measure PM.

In that case it's almost certainly the highway. Tires are a massive source of PM2.5.

That's my main concern although maybe air pollution from toast / allergens is just as bad.

No it's just an LED that's either blue, orange, red. I knew it wouldn't give me exact figures (or pollutants) but from what I'd read the "fix" was to get an air purifier or move.

Do you happen to eat toast in the morning?

>“The scariest thing in this house is probably the toaster,” Erin Katz, another student volunteer, said. “I just had no idea that toasters emitted so many particles.”[1]

[1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/08/the-hidden-air...

Yes, quite frequently. I haven't read it yet but had heard cooking can trip PM2.5 sensors up but I guess I assumed that air quality issues that come from something you eat would be less detrimental to health (as a general rule). It could certainly explain the propensity to kick up in the morning. Thank you.

> It mostly kicks up in the morning but I have no idea what is causing it to think the air quality is bad.

If it's a standard PM sensor, those usually have a high temperature correlation that needs to be compensated for, and turning on the heat in the morning would likely produce a false positive with only naive signal processing.

I have laser PM sensors indoors and outdoors. Every morning my indoor one goes nuts. I have found that it's due to my SO spraying hair products.

Do you happen to live in an apartment building? In my case, pollution from the downstairs neighbors would affect my apartment. Especially cigarette smoke, which my neighbor only smokes indoor in the morning.

Cooking breakfast is also a huge source of pollutants.

I live in a single family dwelling so it's probably breakfast then.

For my apartment, highest polluters include: dishwasher heating cycle, cooking, neighbor cigarette smoke, and air leaking in from main door. Adding weather stripping on the main door has substantially reduced the ambient pollution levels of my unit.

Adding stripping to my patio door that opens towards the main street helped me a lot. I am also surprised at how much noise isolation this added.

This makes my dwelling more air tight, so it's not good for carbon dioxide but I simply open windows outside traffic hours.

shower

Do you think air pollution can be a cause of headaches and do you have good sources for reading about this? Recently I have been having a constant headache after moving to Budapest. Went to the doctors, they found nothing wrong with me. I went back to Germany and France for two weeks, felt better there. Back to Budapest, felt worse again. I also tried to move to Bielsko-Biala in Poland and the headache has gotten even worse here (2 days since I'm in Poland) It seems far fetched that pollution is the cause of my headache because most people do not have headaches there, so I want to read more about it.

I'm pretty sure my cat allergies were giving me 3-day headaches when one of our cats that I'm most allergic to would sleep in our bed and then I'd end up with the same pillow she slept on. I kept the cat out of the bedroom and no more asthma or headaches for 3-4 months now. So perhaps allergies?

Could also be allergies. You might try and OTC allergy medication for a bit and see if it makes any difference.

I don’t have any sources, just another anecdote. I live in Beijing, and one of my friends gets a headache whenever the air gets close to 200 AQI. (That’s not the case for me or most people I know though. Me, I get a days-long sore throat once a quarter unless I have an air purifier at home and at work)

Why not buy an air purifier?

sensor.community promotes building an open environmental data network, and has a good guide to building an ESP8266/SDS011 based node.

https://sensor.community/en/sensors/airrohr/

SDS011: PM2.5 and PM10 sensor, as in 2.5 and 10 um particulate matter sensor, ie dust/pollution. Pollen too?

When air pollution in cities is discussed, many people immediately assume traffic. But for particulates, traffic is associated with just about 1/4 of total amount, while about 1/2 is associated with local solid fuel heating (both coal and wood).

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