I see a fume extractor under the desk. As someone who was in the market for one recently, I'd love some discussion (like loudness, price, performance, etc).
1: https://www.hse.gov.uk/lung-disease/electronics-soldering.ht...
Of course there needs to be somewhere for them to go, but if you can have an open window close to your bench, that solves that problem quite nicely.
Compared to no fan/filter, they're A LOT better, I'd say. And a relatively small price to pay for such an improvement.
But yeah, they're not nearly as good as a real fume extractor.
Although the comparison is against normal lab air conditions, which aren't great, as opposed to something like a home lab. At home I just open the window.
These super basic fan+mat fume extractors do get the fumes out of your face, which is the most important part, but the particulate and VOC levels in the room will quickly exceed acceptable levels.
But even with a proper filter stack which filters over 99.9%, you can only filter what's actually captured. You still need some ventilation and it's also a good idea to run an air purifier in automatic mode to filter what wasn't captured at the source. What isn't filtered by filters is filtered by your lungs.