First clean water, now clean air
finmoorhouse.com
finmoorhouse.com
We live in a small apartment, and just being 30 min with 2 people in the room raises the CO2 ppm from 400 to >1000. Opening a window quickly lowers it. Never-mind doing some light activity like yoga or similar.
So if we want to do something, I think the first step is really to get visibility to the problem, especially to the costs of the problem (productivity, public health, sick leaves, etc).
[1] at the levels found in my apartment
It uses the "Senseair S8" CO2 sensor, which costs a bit (25-30$), but (according to AirGradient) has a very high quality.
[1]: https://www.airgradient.com/open-airgradient/instructions/di...
Depending on how many you build at a time, you can source all the parts for maybe $40-$60. Assembly is straightforward as long as you're comfortable with through-hole soldering (and if not, this is a great chance to learn). The design is also modular enough that it's easy to skip on things like the thermometer or particulate matter sensor if you're so inclined.
My goal is to get a cheap (~$50) sensor in a small package that I can put in every room in my house. It will be modular so I skip the display and the PM2.5 sensor and it can be cheap as ~$25
[1]: https://www.airgradient.com/open-airgradient/blog/co2-sensor...
A sensible first step would be to very visibly display CO₂ monitors in buildings (e.g., throughout office buildings, schools, etc)
Once the CO₂ levels become visible, this in itself creates an incentive to improve.
Related from UK (2021): "All schools to receive carbon dioxide monitors" - https://www.gov.uk/government/news/all-schools-to-receive-ca...
My wife purchased an Aronet CO₂ monitor, and I took it with me on a business trip last week. The CO₂ while on the flight was in the 3000's range. The CO₂ at my client's office was in the mid 2000's range, as well as the hotel. Opening the hotel window the allowed 2 inches reduces CO₂ to the 600 range in 10 minutes, but the client's office windows do not open, and of course neither do the airplane windows.
I've also noticed when working indoors or when driving, if the CO₂ is above 1500 I get drowsy, so the degree it is no longer responsible driving a car.
Air safety: are we going to fight a moronic battle over this too?
There was no meaningful attempt or debate about changing ventilation standards then when it would have tangibly saved lives, there certainly won't be now.
And most were the same people repeating the "are you for or against science?" line.
Crazy years, dominated by completely random propaganda. Discussions on calmer times follow different rules, and if nobody decides to spend a lot of money stopping it, it can follow rational, evidence based lines.
Whereas personal-domain actions like sanitizing and masking cost companies basically nothing and reinforce the mindset that covid mitigation is an individual responsibility and so the consequences from having it are an individual burden. It doesn't even matter if they work or not, from this perspective, which explains why pointless things like sanitizing and QR menus persisted so long.
1. Inertia: Sanitizing and disinfection was what was recommended in March 2020. Even masking was actively discouraged until later.
2. "We have to do something." "This is something."
3. Handwashing/hand sanitizing and sanitizing surfaces are visible actions that reassure some people. Ventilation and filtration improvements are generally not visible.
4. Ventilation and filtration improvements are expensive and, for an institution, require certified professionals to design and implement. There aren't enough of these people and not enough equipment to implement this for every building in a timely manner. Handwashing and clorox wipes are cheap and anyone can use them.
Personally I think that COVID is likely going to be with us for some time to come and will cause significant disability as people get infected repeatedly. I think eventually we will see significant uptake of ventilation/filtration improvements.
At least one person (with multiple chemical sensitivity) committed suicide (medically-assisted) because the sanitation and smoking in her apartment complex during COVID made her life so miserable she didn't want to live anymore. https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/woman-with-chemical-sensitivit...
Nearly any blanket-like measure was blocked by those. E.g. Vitamin-D supplementation, of which we know almost every indoor worker has a deficit of in western countries. Never ever was this prompted by govs even though there’s a clear correlation between deficit and deaths (not causation) and it has even antiviral properties (I suggest you to look into MedCram YouTube channel on videos around the first year of COVID where they go over many case studies on potential treatments)
https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-xpm-2013-sep-1...
Usually what I do is set it on recirculate, and then every ~10 minutes I periodically "flush" the CO2-laden interior air for a minute or so. Ideally, I'm able to do this "flush" when I'm away from a major city or high-traffic road (and not when driving behind a soot-spewing diesel bus/semi/garbage/cement truck).
I wish there were some way to automate this logic!
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(and yes, my dear observant reader, if I could recirculate "only" 90% of the exterior air it would achieve the same steady-state result, but modern cars got rid of the "slider" that lets you select a percentage of recirculate air... ::sigh::)
Ideally a controller would monitor the outside CO/PM and inside CO2 to control the recirculate door.
Having a few internal and external sensors for various gasses could work, but it’s a surprisingly difficult problem.
My experience (and my nose) strongly disagrees with this assertion. YMMV.
The urban-vs-rural divide in my area is shockingly detectable just by the smell of combustion byproducts alone.
> you aren’t tracking [wind direction]
Who says I'm not? Tall flagpoles make for nice, ubiquitous windsocks. I wouldn't use it to land a plane, but for this purpose it works just fine.
And yes, it's absolutely a hard problem. Just look at all the ink I've spilled...
The human nose (especially mine) is still a remarkable chemical sensor, with only a few blind spots. In practice the major blind spots, namely CO, correlate well with detectable combustion byproducts. I appreciate your concern, but you worry for no good reason!
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I'll share one final trick, which should be pretty obvious: avoid sucking in the packet of air a bunch of cars (or one diesel truck) just accelerated through. In practice, usually this means turning on recirculate when stopping behind a line of cars, and then waiting to turn off recirculate until a short distance after going through the light.
Just to preempt the seemingly-inevitable negativity reflex: if you don't believe such hyper-local variations in pollution make a big difference, I guess you've never cycled before. ;)
To good air and good health! Cheers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olfactory_fatigue
Urban/suburban areas provide a different variety of smells which is easy to confuse with overall toxicity levels. Chemical sensors will sometimes line up with your expectations and other times be very different.
Living outside the city, I'm not constantly fatigued to its odors. So that's not a factor.
But more to my original point, it disproves the "wind > location" idea (in my geography), since odor acts as a tracer for packets of air coming from the city.
I wish I could calm your anxiety, but on the bright side I am truly touched by your outpouring of concern for my respiratory well-being! Thank you, kind stranger.
If you’re trying to judge air concentrations based on how intense the smell, it simply doesn’t work.
The converse is not necessarily true of course, but I can do this without hundreds of dollars in sensors. "Do what you can, where you are, with what you've got."
To account for sub-detectable pollution levels, I generally give myself a little extra buffer room. If I observe that detectable pollution odors begin at a certain point, I'll engage recirculate a half-mile before.
Generally nowadays I successfully avoid any detectable pollution/proxy odors, using the sort of preemptive planning I've described. You should try it!
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TL;DR this whole thread: recirculate gives better air quality, just flush CO2 periodically, ideally when in relatively cleaner air
https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-xpm-2013-sep-1...
https://news.ucr.edu/articles/2020/01/13/clearing-air-inside...
Moving from constant levels of pollution to intermittent levels of population you notice ever stronger smells even as things improve. The reverse is also true, going from intermittent smells to constant toxicity it seems like things are improving.
This is the case because you most easily notice rapid changes not overall levels.
And again, both articles ignore the possibility of having better filters.
Not really. What I currently do prevents any health flare-ups, so it's working for me.
I might be effected by sub-detectable levels of pollution. I definitely would be effected by detectable levels of pollution. So I know I'm better off, which makes me happy.
I do not confuse this with perfection, but this level of cost/benefit tradeoff is "good enough" for me. Some of these tricks might be helpful for other people too!
> Moving from constant levels of pollution to intermittent levels of [pollution]
This is not my situation.
> And again, both articles ignore the possibility of having better filters.
I didn't write the articles, I just cited them to support the fact that recirculate results in lower pollution levels in cars.
I, in my life, very much do not ignore air filters. :)
Again, assuming inadequate filters, better filters invalidate their results.
> sub detectable
This is very much detectable, we just ignore it. Come back from a long trip to a remote enough area and it’s shocking how much everything smells, even small country roads briefly stink of pollution.
But, I think the dead horse has been beaten enough at this point.
Nevertheless, sub-detectable levels we can ignore are lower than sub-detectable levels we can't ignore. So I'm still better off than I would be otherwise. How is this so hard to understand?
You're letting perfect be the enemy of good. This is the critical point you've been ignoring this whole time. All the horse beating could have been avoided! ;)
> recirculating results in lower <particulate> pollution < and higher non particulate pollution>
Your "non particulate pollution" is just exhaled CO2. This is covered when I mention periodic flush of air. For obvious reasons, the editor inside me didn't feel the need to mention CO2 twice (especially not via muddy language like "non particulate pollution") in what is supposed to be a TLDR.
You should clarify, not obfuscate. Listening to your advice, it's confusing whether to prefer having recirculate on or off. You failed to clearly convey the most critical piece of information.
> better filters invalidate their results
"Better" is vague, so this advice is un-actionable.
Without citation I can only assume you just mean bioweapon defense mode, correct?
> Your "non particulate pollution" is just exhaled CO2.
No, it’s carbon monoxide, NOx, SOx compounds etc. Opening your vents when you stop noticing smells makes things worse.
Not a fixed level, of course! But at any given instant, the level you can ignore is lower than the one you can't. Hence I'm still better off doing this, a fact which apparently you can't stand for some weird reason...
You're also going to gather data over time, which will tend to smooth out any such day-to-day variations.
This is how you can reduce (not eliminate) pollution exposure without paying for expensive non-nose sensors. This is true whether you Believe It Or Not™.
>No, it’s carbon monoxide, NOx, SOx compounds etc.
Citation desperately needed. I showed you mine, you show me yours!
What conceivable mechanism could concentrate these traffic pollutants higher than the outside concentration? Are you running a pump that's somehow fighting entropy to push these outside traffic pollutants (against the alleged concentration gradient) into your car??
Usually it helps if your claim doesn't violate the laws of thermodynamics. :D
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edit: I'll throw you a bone to save time. Literally the only way to achieve this outcome without violating physics is to intentionally reverse my recommendation: try to suck in only the most polluted urban air (intake the concentrated plume from a line of cars accelerating, behind a garbage truck or schoolbus, etc), and then switch to recirculate to save up that highly polluted air and breathe it for as long as possible.
So...... don't do that! If you're studying IAQ in cars, you need to control for that.
How does the fresh air mode on the car not pull in CO gases from the engine bay? Surely a pleated cabin filter is not enough to stop it? Or does the air come from the manifold air intake?
AFAIK the air in a Plane is cycled out too fast for that amount to develop. Maybe the Lower air pressure was the cause? Since it was portable it was probably the NIR type? If its not measuring all the time it might also be the heater type - I am really not sure how that type would deal with low pressure. Or was is the "eCO2" type - in that case well I doubt you get anything out of that thing in a plane except a high number.
One thing I noticed is that CO2 seems to "flow and pool" in certain places as it seemingly "rains" down and the room is "filled" from the bottom up. A Table for instance might develop a layer that is thick enough for my meter to hoover it up (it has a fan).
So, I could easily see the aircraft venting mostly 700ppm air while some areas hit 3000 ppm internally.
so the old adage of rolling down the window when driving might actually have some factual logic to it. of course, people are only considering that when at the extreme end of trying to stay awake from already driving past safe limits, but it could easily make a long haul trip more bearable by remembering to crack the window at intervals. then again, if you're riding with my buddies, you were already having to crack the windows at intervals, but for other reasons.
I always assumed they intentionally messed with oxygen in the cabin to "relax" travelers.
Anecdotally, I have often experienced a sedative effect on airplanes that I do not ever experience in land vehicles.
For one, it's really difficult/energy intensive to increase the level of oxygen in a space. Second, it's very very difficult to purify oxygen -- because oxygen oxidizes stuff. Even if you could do that, raising the level of oxygen is extremely dangerous, because it radically increases flammability of things and makes fire much worse. For an example of this: Apollo 1.
Do you want indoor circulation? Wouldn't that just mean your apartment loses heat/AC?
In general there is likely some level of ventillation that will be worth taking on slightly increased heating/cooling costs.
Getting poor air quality for decades also has a cost.
Typing more than a one word reply is pretty cheap though.
Many homes didn't have AC because a) it was expensive, and b) you used to not need it as much.
And plenty of people can afford these things, cost is not the only consideration nor some magic word to dismiss the tech generally.
There are ways around it though. The simplest is to not make sure ventilation goes where it needs to go. Modern buildings use mechanical ventilation to make sure every living space gets properly ventilated so one room doesn't get too much and another too little. Even better, some building use heat exchangers to heat/cool the incoming air with outgoing air, minimizing losses. Other techniques involve passing the fresh air underground, which, in a temperate climate gets you some free heating in the winter and free cooling in the summer.
Obviously, to limit heat losses, you want to reduce conduction and radiation too, which can be done without sacrificing ventilation.
Growing up we used to put on sweaters, wear shorts, use fans, have the windows open in a car.
Changing our heating/cooling preferences to get rid of all that costs money. People don't mind.
But somehow, spending a small bit to breathe well and avoid indoor pollution/viruses is beyond the pale.
Based on some HN comment from a while ago I invested in a CO2 meter (they are still quite expensive for some reason). And I share the same experience, CO2 levels can raise rapidly indoors, but simply turning on ventilation or opening a window very quickly lowers CO2 contents.
Using the meter I found CO2 levels in my bedroom can become quite high at night. So I improved the ventilation in my bedroom, and in my case it helped me to achieve better sleep.
(This is of course highly location dependent. Now that I think about it, I was probably taking a bit more risk at that time than what I tolerate now.)
also, are there really people that can (or even prefer!) to sleep with closed windows?! Only with AC blasting, right?
Sometimes in very hot weather I do leave the windows open at night but it's due to heat, not air quality.
I'd love to have ventilation with heat exchanger, but that's basically unheard of where I live.
Always? I am fine if the air is fresh (e.g. sea breeze onto shore), but tend to get sniffles in city or countryside environments.
I do this every day regardless of the season. Works best during windy weather
Once I install an HRV system then I'll do the windows!
Household HRVs & ERVs have suspiciously low heat efficiencies for their costs.
Where are you getting this information from?
https://www.amazon.co.uk/single-room-heat-recovery-ventilati...
There's cyclic systems, but I live in a neighbourhood where some houses were equipped with it; on the proper setting, it was too loud so people turned it down, then people got sick from high CO2 levels in their house.
It's a neat technology but the jury is still out on it.
Some people praise them, other people revile them, and they seem to be either too bulky or too cumbersome or too expensive or too inefficient for a DIY retrofit project.
it's really not debatable. the feeling of stuffiness is a function of many things, but environmentally, it's mostly temperature and humidity (we humans are hot and breathe out lots of humidity). there are no cognitive/energy effects until you get into the 10's of thousand of ppm, as the mechanism of action is competing out oxygen, not some intrinsic maladaption to CO₂, which is actually vital to life on earth. it's fashionable to hate on carbon right now (it's mediopolitical), and that's really all there is to it.
particulates, VOCs and chemical off-gassing, on the other hand, do have known mechanisms of harm, and that's something you should be more concerned about, but not yet alarmed. most of that pollution comes from cars and coal/gas power generation, so long-term, we should move toward more efficient habitation (e.g., denser cities, public transit) and cleaner power generation (including nuclear) if we really care about our collective health.
practically no one should be worried about CO₂ in their daily lives. it's thoroughly a red herring.
If these measurable declines have a sufficient impact on our lives and productivity is the debatable part.
Edit: here's one reference: "We also found effects of CO2 (a proxy for ventilation) on cognitive function. For every 500ppm increase, we saw response times 1.4-1.8% slower, and 2.1-2.4% lower throughput"
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/healthybuildings/2021/09/09/imp...
CO₂ is a fashionable concern but not scientifically supported. more importantly, it distracts from things we really should be concerned about as states and nations, like actual pollution and the alarming concentration of power and wealth.
I don't think this topic distracts from anything. I live in Finland, where indoor air quality is a big topic (mycotoxins and spores due to mold in old houses, burning wood in residential areas due to particulate emissions on cold days, construction codes, etc), while the country is making strides to become carbon neutral, and has one of the lowest economical inequality in the world.
But anyway, as I mentioned in the initial comment, the high CO2 just raised my attention to the bad ventilation of the house, and that includes ventilation of particulates from activities like cooking.
I haven't seen anybody take any of the cheap CO2 sensors and demonstrate that they are anywhere in the range of the readings of a lab grade CO2 sensor.
Please do not do/use this.
Generally anything that is 'active', like UV lamps or ozone emitters, is not a good idea:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSFQQpgvgeo&t=6m1s
* Interviewee: https://civmin.utoronto.ca/home/about-us/directory/professor...
All that's needed for good indoor air quality (IAQ) is an ERV/HRV which exhausts stale indoor air and brings in fresh outdoor air (through a filter).
For comfort you want a furnace+AC/heatpupmp and a dehumidifier.
And try to make the enclosure as air-tight as possible so the air comes in and out on your terms and not 'randomly' through cracks (where it can carry dust and pollen, and bugs can perhaps get through as well).
Some UVC generates Ozone, some do not. Wavelength and spectral Q factor matter.
It’s possible to have a UV system that does what you want without the downside, but it does cost.
The main downside is that you are introducing a chemistry experiment into your ventilation system.
If you want clean air, then (a) cycle in/outside air at ASHRAE-recommended volumes, and (b) use high-MERV/HEPA filters.
In wildfire zones and in wildfire season you can perhaps add charcoal filters—if your system is designed to handle the pressure/head loss—to get rid of the smoke-y smells.
• Positive pressure maintenance, so that any air leak paths are not introducing outside air pollutants
• HEPA filtration, using two filters in series so I can "cycle through" filters, moving the post-filter to the pre-filter location and using a brand-new post-filter (this is similar to the ISS water filter change procedure, and maximizes expendable filter utilization); by the series-parallel circuit math, this should requires four times the total area of HEPA filter
• pressure drop sensors, so I only need to replace the HEPA filter when necessary
• activated carbon post-filter that lets me to replace only the granules themselves, using bulk activated carbon
• washable screen prefilter, to avoid premature saturation of the HEPA medium with >10 micron particles
• washable electrostatic prefilter, to avoid premature saturation of the HEPA medium with <1.0 micron particles
• HRV/ERV, to avoid unwanted heat and humidity transfer to the outside air
• HRS/ERV Bypass, so I can use "free cooling" / "free heating" to exploit natural temperature differences over the day
• (optional) MERV-13 post-prefilter, to intercept ~95% of PM2.5 and greatly extend the life of the HEPA filter train
Does anyone know of a system that has all these features?
My overall impression is that it isn’t a technology at a consumer grade maturity.
UVGI does not create Ozone, some companies even sell certified lamps that will definitively not go into the UV spectrum that can cause Ozone.
This is true for UV-C and in the postings mention of new far-UVC LEDs.
https://www.uvresources.com/the-ultraviolet-germicidal-irrad...
For personal homes UVGI is most likely not needed, unless immunocompromised I'd guess. For hospitals, pharmacies, schools, airplanes and other high risk institutions I would guess that this could prevent plenty of deaths.
Edit: Their criticism is about the high-voltage needed for Mercury-vapor UV-C lamps. This can leak ozone, also if the glass is not filtering the 185nm wavelength properly that will contribute even further. The article talks about LEDs which will definitively not leak into this range. Also as far as I know the specific wavelength of pressure-lamps is not input-frequency defined as implied by the interviewed guy - not exactly sure what he's referring to. My takeout would be only buy mercury-pressure lamps from trusted sources with proper certifications in place.
Most people probably don't change their air filters often enough at home: I have zero confidence of them maintaining an UVGI (themselves, or wanting to shell out the cash for someone to come in).
The best thing to do is circulate air per ASHRAE-recommendations and get high-MERV filters (and hope they are swapped regularly).
These are systems that produce radiation way beyond the energies that can create ozone via UVC. The ozone level is barely measurable and not considered a serious risk. In the video you linked, the narrator opens by saying that ozone barely even makes it through the ventilation system, which is consistent with my understanding of ozone: a reactive, unstable gas. And Dr. Siegel emphasizes this as well: O3 doesn't stick around easily. He doesn't seem to share the presenter's obsession with ozone.
Frankly, I found the video tedious and gave up after a minute. Also, the Siegel's background is mechanical engineering, and he's obviously hedging his statements. Here's an actual scientific review of O3 generation by lamps:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/php.13391
Critical quote: "Again, soft glass UV-C lamps cannot generate ozone".
>I have zero confidence of them maintaining an UVGI
An unmaintained mercury-vapor lamp will not suddenly violate the laws of physics by emitting radiation below the 254 nm spectral line of mercury. The only mechanism that would alter the ozone generation rate is electrical arcing outside the device, which is really a concern with any electrical equipment and not specific to Hg lamps.
Frankly, most of your posts on this sound like you watch too many videos and don't read enough. "Performing chemistry experiments on yourself" — really? This stuff has been studied for centuries.
A more realistic concern with UVGI is that they don't kill everything and can't replace other ventilation components. Some microbes are very, very radioresistant and you're just not going to deliver 10 kilogray in a continuous flow duct using reasonable levels of power.
Reme uses UV against titanium dioxide which releases airborne peroxides which takes out bacteria/viruses/yeast/mold
This is the same tech used in self-cleaning concrete -- just add titanium dioxide and let the sun do the work
Please view the video. The interviewee:
> Jeffrey Siegel, Ph.D., is Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Toronto and a member of the university’s Building Engineering Research Group. He holds joint appointments at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and the Department of Physical & Environmental Sciences. He holds an M.S. and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley as well as a B.Sc. from Swarthmore College. He is fellow of ASHRAE and a member of the Academy of Fellows of ISIAQ. His research interests including healthy and sustainable buildings, ventilation and indoor air quality in residential and commercial buildings, control of indoor particulate matter, the indoor microbiome, and moisture interactions with indoor chemistry and biology. Dr. Siegel is an active member of ISIAQ and ASHRAE and was an associate editor for the journal Building and Environment from 2014-2018. He teaches courses in indoor air quality, sustainable buildings, and sustainable energy systems. Prior to his position at the University of Toronto, Dr. Siegel was an Associate Professor at the University of Texas.
* https://civmin.utoronto.ca/home/about-us/directory/professor...
Peroxide has at best generally been found to useless, and at worst you're introducing active chemistry to your ventilation system (including ozone). If you want to get rid of garbage in your air then (a) exchange it at ASHRAE-recommended volumes, and (b) use high-MERV/HEPA filters.
In wildfire zones and in wildfire season you can perhaps add charcoal filters—if your system is designed to handle the pressure/head loss—to get rid of the smoke-y smells.
There is no need to conduct chemistry experiments on yourself.
The recommendations you mention are together features of the Passive House[1] building standard that seeks low energy use as well. If you build a building to a high standard, it will have a tighter envelope to retain heat/cool and protect against water intrusion. If the envelope is tight, you must actively manage airflow through an ERV/HRV. The consequence is that these buildings are supplied with continuous fresh air, and their ERV can be set up to dynamically react to air quality and other issue to ramp up the transfer.[2]
There's a subculture of builders pursuing these qualities in their building, represented for example by groups like "Building Science and Beer" in Austin[3], and Matt Risinger's Build Show[4].
[1] https://www.treehugger.com/what-is-a-passive-house-principle...
[2] https://www.broan-nutone.com/en-us/ai-series
ERV/HRV are actually part of regular building codes in many areas. The province of Ontario:
* https://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/article/ontario-imposes...
* https://airfixture.com/blog/ontario-building-code-ventilatio...
* http://www.mah.gov.on.ca/AssetFactory.aspx?did=15947
* https://web.archive.org/web/20180626073728/http://www.mah.go...
It's not entirely unlike water issues, for example the Thames was used to dispose of wastes from animal slaughtering, leather tanning, production of dyes from coal tar, alcohol distillery wastes as well as for human excrement. Cleaning up air quality requires addressing these issues as well (coal power plants, diesel truck emissions, agricultural dust, etc.).
Local elections 2023: How sewage topped the political agenda
(As for why it became a key election issue, well, basically the British press lied to make it one - the BBC included. They made an increase in monitoring of sewage discharges look like a massive increase in sewage discharged whilst tricking people into thinking monitoring had got worse by deceptively-worded articles about the few overflows that weren't monitored yet, they told people the Environmental Agency was lying about only recently being able to measure the full extent of sewage discharges based on a hnadful of previously-recorded incidents, they claimed other European countries which still had Victorian-esque sewage systems with no treatment plants that just pumped directly into their rivers and seas in some urban areas were doing a better job, and so on.)
https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/brexit-to-blame-for-u...
It would be cheaper than the infrastructure to extract dirty water and deliver clean (treated) water because we don't need to transport the air anywhere near as far and air treatment is simpler.
IME, the most effective thing to do in a house is filtration inline with the intake of a ventilation system.
In my case, I have an activated carbon and a MERV13 filter that cleans incoming outdoor air just before it's fed to the heat recovery and distribution system.
You still need a separate recirculating filtration system to deal with particulates generated within a house.
>if a country installed all the measures I mentioned
As opposed to the wastewater infrastructure in the first section that can be mandated and put in motion by a government, it's up to individuals and institutions to install the measures.
This makes implementation significantly more challenging, as it relies on the collective efforts and cooperation of numerous parties, each with their own priorities and resources. Government-led initiatives, on the other hand, can be more easily streamlined and enforced, ensuring a higher degree of compliance and effectiveness.
Governments also have a well established mechanism to incentives faster compliance: tax refunds to offset the cost of improvement. We already offer such incentives for energy efficiency improvements (some of which actively harm ventilation).
From an engineering perspective, the clean air proposals are much easier than wastewater management. There is no centralized infastructure needed. Every building can be upgraded independently, and the people in that building will see an immediate benefit.
Further, the upgrades needed are typically not that major. Most building already have a forced air HVAC solution. These solutions already have inline air filters, and often already have the ability to actively pull in fresh air.
We can get significant improvement my simply leaving the fan on these units running regardless of if they are actively heating/cooling; and using already available high quality filters.
In that subject, a quick PSA to home owners: if you have not changed your HVACs filter recently, you probably should.
It requires a slew of regulation, enforcement bodies, and - from a US perspective - profitability for litigation attorneys.
Again with a US slant, ADA is the obvious legislative model for similar clean air regulations.
So it's possible, just more challenging than public sewage.
Tried to get NYC officials to get interested — went through some channels that my friends had. Nothing.
Anyone here interested in doing it?
Regulation requires verification.”
Regulation of water does not require verification. We live on a planet where clean water is abundant and cannot escape the planet’s atmosphere. Why you think we need to measure how this is verified is beyond the beyond’s.
Here’s a wiki page reference if you need help measuring how much water exists on Earth:
While the majority of Earth's surface is covered by oceans, those oceans make up just a small fraction of the mass of the planet. The mass of Earth's oceans is estimated to be 1.37 × 1021 kg, which is 0.023% of the total mass of Earth, 6.0 × 1024 kg. An additional 5.0 × 1020 kg of water is estimated to exist in ice, lakes, rivers, groundwater, and atmospheric water vapor.[20]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_water_on_Earth#Ear...