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Comment by graeme | Hacker News Reader

Tangentially related: management of these issues would be greatly improved by funding CO2 and AQI meters in relevant spaces

Right now people’s attitude to indoor air quality is roughly: can’t see it, isn’t real

But if you’re told:

* Under 1,000 is good * This room is 2,200 ppm

Many people would start asking why the air quality wasn’t good.

Ventilation systems work, I’ve measured CO2 in an incredible crowded airport and found under 800 ppm. But without such monitoring there’s no visibility into which spaces are and aren’t ventilated

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I recently bought a PMSA003 sensor and started logging the results indoors in a capital city. Three big discoveries were that opening the windows made the air quality way worse, sometimes the air quality is bad indoors and out without any clear coloration with other weather events and finally deodorant is absolutely awful.

We're about to start messing around with filters, I built a home brew one with a duct fan and an inline activated carbon filter, but we've bought a retail filter that will be here soon so that will be interesting.

I do think more people should be aware of their air quality.

I bought an air purifier a few years ago and if you use spray type deodorant in the same room as it the thing kicks in to hyper mode for a while.

We’ve taken to saying ‘you made it angry’.

Even farting directly in to it doesn’t make it do that.

Yeah, either I move to roll on or the world learns to live with my musk.

Yeah if you live in a place with pollution outdoors and no indoor HVAC there is a real severe trade off between co2 and aqi

If a place is sub say 70-100 in AQI then usually indoors will be 4-13 AQI with windows open but above that you’ll see indoor increases with open windows.

Cold climates also suck for co2. There are very cheap hrv’s but I think they are noisy.

That one’s actually easier. Air circulates much better when there is a temperature difference.

A single window opened a crack will generally ventilate most homes or apartments.

There will be somewhat higher heating costs but usually not excessive. Less than a lot of non-essential things people already spend money on

To manage high AQI and high CO2 and you need the windows open enough to ventilate and enough hepa to lower the AQI pollutants that comes in

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