Unfortunately, the fact is that most people are now spending something like 20 hours a day inside… there is no easy answer. I sometimes wonder how much the sterilization hypothesis is wrapped up in the effect of prolonged indoor air exposure.
I am happy many folks around where I live started to go out for their exercise during COVID but I hope they keep that outdoor habit after the pandemic is over.
That sleepyness is a factor in car crashes can also be observed with increased rates shortly after winter/summer time changes.
[1] https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/overview/crashes-b...
During low traffic, there may be one vehicle to keep track of, and few pedestrians or other bikes.
That safe environment is quickly turned into an enabler for more aggressive and careless riding though. For fun and for getting from A to B faster.
It might be more interesting to look at bicycle fatalities than fatal car crashes [1]. Looking at the time-of-day distribution, fully 50% of such fatalities happen between 3pm-midnight. 6-9am is a higher risk slot (12%), but I'd probably avoid biking during 8-9am regardless.
[1] https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/bicyc...
Sorry for the crappy source, but I'm short on time right now to find you a better one: https://laqm.defra.gov.uk/public-health/pm25.html
Just make sure you're masked when you clean or replace any of the filters.
Citation needed?
As far as I am aware unless you are building deep underground or have built your house on radon rich bedrock, or your house is entirely made of granite, this is absolutely not a concern for the average person.
If you are in doubt you can look up what is the expected radon exposure on the ground region where you live. Most people will have a higher radiation exposure from an arm x-ray than from ground leaking Radon.
from: https://www.ukradon.org/information/ukmaps
"Every building contains radon but the levels are usually low. The chances of a higher level depend on the type of ground. Public Health England has published a map showing where high levels are more likely."
getting a sensor at a reasonable price is tricky since Radon emits Alpha radiation - I managed to get one at around £300
I aspire to have zero particulates in my home air, it takes some doing. Much of the particles are of human/industrial origin anyway. Exhaust and tire particulate and various broken down human built materials. (and an overabundance of human pieces that fall off and collect in ways that wouldn't happen outside)
I also aspire to have a low CO2 PPM inside, this conflicts with the previous (i.e. it is difficult without intense forced air exchange with the outside to achieve CO2 levels less than twice outside levels.
But to the contrary, I do not use disinfectants ever except in very specific circumstances. I go out of my way to not buy products which make disinfectant claims.
I think human beings need to be out in nature, to regularly come into contact with living soil. Not just "nature" of curated footpaths and manicured, fertilized lawns and parks, but actually getting dirty outside where other organisms live. It's hard to do in cities, and growing up on a farm it still seems absurd to me that I have to aspire and do great organizing to find myself somewhere in a city where I am not standing on a surface that has been engineered by people. The closest I can get is usually the strips of grass along the sidewalks that act as nothing but dog toilets. (I love dogs, but city dogs offend me. They're animals, they want to be outside and not just tethered to you or for the occasional adventure to a park)
An somewhat gross anecdote:
Several weeks ago I got a cut on my foot from some shattered glass that developed into an odd looking infection with red stripes/blotches that I was on the edge of scheduling an appointment for a doctor. I happened to visit a local lake and dipped my toes in for a bit. The next day I was amazed, the redness which had been growing in intensity for a couple of weeks was just completely gone. Maybe it was a coincidence but I strongly believe that whatever was having a grand ol time eating my foot seems to have made a tasty meal for whatever cocktail of microorganisms were hanging out in that lake (I assume it was a fungal infection which was outcompeted by a restored microbiome seeded from the lake)
Particulates seem to be the easiest to remove -- much easier than VOC's and other gases.
My new furnace has a MERV 11 filter that I've been playing around with in recent days as we've had AQI close to 100.
I have an air quality monitor (that measures PM1, PM2.5 and PM10) in the house, within about 20 minutes of turning on the furnace blower, AQI of 70 inside the house drops down to less than 10, and 20 minutes after that, it's down in the low single digits.
I have a MERV 13 filter that I could put in the furnace, but I'm not sure I need it since the MERV 11 seems to handle it.
Certainly not professional level calibration, but shows that it's within the ballpark. Unfortunately I don't think there's an official EPA monitoring station within 10 miles so I can't really check it against a calibrated monitor.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3192198/
Playing in mud and with animals is probably beneficial, but unclean air isn’t.
A damp and mouldy environment is clearly not good, but I wouldn't want my home to be a sterile environment whichlimited opportunity to build immunity.
Once our children are past the age of 10 or so we will probably go back to running air filters all the time. But the early years are crucial for immune system development and lack of exposure to the natural environment in early years is likely to be one of the biggest reasons for the rise in allergic diseases.
Oh, and stop using gas appliances indoors.
If you get a particle meter you quickly learn that the biggest source of particulate isn't gas but cooking (and especially lightly burning) food. The slightest smell of smoke means your home is going to be like (insert terrible air quality city) for a few minutes to a few hours depending on filtration.
One of the worst sources of this is the fact that so few places have real vent fans above cooking surfaces (the sucking through the microwave business does essentially nothing).
However, they cost a sizeable chunk more than the cheap shit you find in rentals. (In SV, that cheap shit is looking spiffy, but it's still cheap shit. If it says Frigidaire, you know it's not exactly high end)
A typical kitchen had a stove and either an old-fashioned icebox or a fridge, and that was it.
FWIW I think every place I've lived in Australia has had a vented rangehood over the stove, but maybe that is just blind luck.
Maybe people with gas stoves burn their food more because of the higher potential heat?
Still, I try to avoid any of it! I have an induction stove, but now do things like skin-on salmon in the air fryer because it produces basically no smoke, whereas it used to smoke my house out when I did it on the frypan. Requires a lot less supervision than to stop it burning in the pan too, which is nice (but perhaps I was always just doing it on too hot a pan)...
This claim doesn't really pass the smell test for me. My induction burner gets plenty hot really fast, much warmer than I could ever practically use while cooking, even. After a quick search I was not able to find any data supporting the claim either - the only data I was able to find seemed to support induction peaking out at significantly higher temperatures than gas.
Do you have any data on gas vs induction- max temperatures?
An induction burner will be limited to about 1.5 kW if it's a portable unit and maybe 2.5 kW on a built-in range.
A gas range will usually have a high rating of 15-20,000 BTU/h which works out to ~4.5-6 kW.
But thermal transfer efficiency is different, they both depend on the size of the pan, the material, shape, etc.
Stick a needle into a 3000F flame and it will be red hot in a second. A thin smallish pan can get super hot. You can't just have a "max temp" rating. However induction ranges will have some thermal protection for their insides.
If you spill something, the flames will also burn what you spilled.
Sounds like you will have excessive CO2 problem. Have you measured that?
This is a valid concern, here is a relevant peer-reviewed paper that models the impacts that interventions such as lock-downs, masking, and excessive sanitization may have in the context of the ongoing pandemic [1].
Quotes from [1]:
> Nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) have been employed to reduce the transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), yet these measures are already having similar effects on other directly transmitted, endemic diseases.
> we consider the implications of SARS-CoV-2 NPIs for two endemic infections circulating in the United States of America: respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and seasonal influenza
> Using laboratory surveillance data from 2020, we estimate that RSV transmission declined by at least 20% in the United States at the start of the NPI period.
> We simulate future trajectories of both RSV and influenza, using an epidemic model. As susceptibility increases over the NPI period, we find that substantial outbreaks of RSV may occur in future years, with peak outbreaks likely occurring in the winter of 2021–2022.
> Longer NPIs, in general, lead to larger future outbreaks although they may display complex interactions with baseline seasonality
The most important takeaway from this paper is that it will be critical to prepare for this phenomenon to prevent the over-utilization of healthcare facilities across the globe. Personally I don't see how anyone could argue for longer and more intense NPIs if we begin to see this play out.
[1] The impact of COVID-19 nonpharmaceutical interventions on the future dynamics of endemic infections https://www.pnas.org/content/117/48/30547
Sometimes ppl are not just allergic to gluten, but the whole category of lectin(which is in every seed), they just don't react as strongly, but they're never really healthy and suffer from all kinds of ailments.
and then I travelled to another country with different kinds of pollen in the air and I wound up suffering from allergies there, how humiliating! so I thought, but really just humbling
looking up how to remedy it I found that one accepted train of thought now is that people are prone to develop allergies at any age, let alone being exposed to things different than where you grew up
so I would nip the over-sterilization argument right there. keep indoors clean, go outside.
When you traveled you got into contact with allergens that your body hadn't encountered before. If you had been in contact with those allergens when growing up then perhaps you wouldn't have had an allergic reaction?
>I found that one accepted train of thought now is that people are prone to develop allergies at any age
If you've never had soy before then how could you know whether you have a soy allergy or not?
I'm not trying to convince you either way. Just some holes in the argument.
I'm allergic to grass pollen myself. I have no idea how that squares with the argument, because I certainly never shied away from grass in the summer. But it's a fairly weak allergy.
Put in other terms, your body can overreact any time for any reason causing inflammation.
The rest I'm guessing is extrapolation from that - lack of early exposure = negative.
I grew up with a dog, and never tasted or smelled anything until a few years after the dog died
As an example, I was never exposed to cats early age but dogs yes. Now I have a mild reaction to cats hair and nothing with dogs. Of course this isn't a scientific study that can be validated but it does sort of make sense in my mind.
A la antibodies etc.
Allergies aren't a simple phenomenon.