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Comment by slimsag | Hacker News Reader

Ozone is very dangerous. The EPA concluded it poses serious health risks back in 2013 (causes asthma and respiratory harm, short and long term exposure is linked to likely early death, and even linked to cardiovascular problems.)

Cleaning air is simple; you don't need to look to obscure Ozone/UV devices.

For gasses/VOCs, you need a carbon filter. The larger the filter and more air that moves past it, the better. You can grab industrial ones used in greenhouses for ~$150, some brands (LAYOND on Amazon) have cases that make them look alright and make them quiet.

For particulate (dust), a carbon filter works OK but a HEPA filter is better. Get a name brand one (Honeywell) so you're not getting ripped off.

None of that will replace the lack of oxygen, though-so open a window.

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This.

Ventilation is critical, lest you get other issues such as mould which is a whole other set of problems in itself.

IKEA do some very good value devices. The Fornuftigs are nice, but quite weak. The Starkvind smart purifiers are better. They’re explicitly not HEPA and aim for less dense media / higher cycles, and they produce generally similar results at lower costs.

(There are some poorly informed reviews online that give a bad review because they’re not marketed as true HEPA filters, but this misses the point of cleaning the air you breathe rather than the air inside the unit. There was a post that corrected these reviews on HN some time back, will try to dig out and update).

LINK: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31812259

> None of that will replace the lack of oxygen, though-so open a window.

I would think that it would be really hard to make any kind of dent in how much oxygen is in the room... wouldn't, by the time you get there, you have long long since died of carbon dioxide poisoning?

Just small increases in the CO2 concentration can cause brain fog and headaches even if you won’t literally die from the room. Normally the feeling of a room being “stuffy” is the first sign. That’s a mere 600ppm where that begins to happen.

Here’s the basic levels of CO2 that are acceptable in a room. I know I get drowsy in rooms without good airflow when in meetings at the office.

https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/amp/co2-comfort-level-d_1...

And yet in not many years that will be atmospheric levels. This is the element of fossil fuel emissions nobody seems to be discussing, and we don’t know its consequences

In some chess tournaments played remotely they put CO2 sensors in players' rooms and there was a surprisingly big correlation between good and bad form and CO2, to the point that some players started to play with open windows and warm clothes during the winter (for example Jan Krzysztof Duda).

Do you know about carbon filter recycling ? if you pyrolyze the filter would it evaporate the toxic compounds and leave pure carbon lumps ready to reuse ?

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