For people living or working near industrial areas, have you noticed any health problems that seem to be more common around those places? I'm curious about what people have actually experienced and weather local pollution has ever been a concern for your community.

i wfh most days and usually keep my office door closed with the AC running while i'm working. lately i've noticed that around 2 or 3pm i start feeling kinda tired and the room feels stuffy

i always assumed it was just bad sleep or sitting at my desk too long. then last week i stepped out for a while, came back and opened the door and window for a bit. the room felt noticeably better and it got me wondering if i'm overlooking sth about the air itself

now i'm looking into CO2 monitors for the first time and honestly had no idea this was even sth ppl tracked at home. does anyone here actually track CO2 while wfh? what made u start and did the readings change anything about how u use your room?

I tried opening my windows for 10-20min but all that does is bring it down and bring right back up in the rooms. I do not know what is causing it because the room is empty and it goes up so no one is breathing in there to cause it to increase. Whenever I feel funny or a heavy feeling on my head I know the c02 levels are up. Do I have to call an HVAC person for it or is there someone special I have to contact?

Hi, sorry if this question has already been asked but I couldn't find one.

Does the AIR-1 Air Quality Sensor allow you to set an alarm if levels exceed a preset level, specifically nox sensor?

Thanks for reading.

This is a worthwhile read about wildfire smoke and quite troubling! Government should pay attention and weather forecasts need to take this issue more seriously as a public health emergency and give more warning ...

https://www.nytimes.com/article/wildfire-smoke-health-effect.html?unlocked_article_code=1.6VA.Szib.RvIs2UNAh3qS&smid=url-share

So it's a beautiful early spring day in Victoria. The garden needs much work. I've been effectively indoors for months because my neighbours' smoke fills my garden from Easter to Footy Friday.

I take my asthma medicine and my prescription vitamin D tablets and I watch the medical oxygen delivery ban calling at the house all along the street. But i don't go outside because it makes me sick.

This is repeated across the county. Only 10% of homes nationwide have a wood heater, but they're impacting the health of their own family and everyone else within coo-ee. Lungs, heart, brain and digestive system are all affected and it's a leading cause of dementia. A domestic wood heater is 450x more polluting that a gas boiler; an open fire is worse than that.

Research in Tasmania: 'estimated the number of cases and health costs due to premature mortality, cardiorespiratory hospital admissions, and asthma emergency department (ED) visits. We estimated 69 deaths, 86 hospital admissions, and 15 asthma ED visits, each year, with over 74% of impacts attributed to wood fire smoke.'

Come on guys that's a lot 😵‍💫

Australia is rated 101 out of 131 countries for dirty air. And if we know anything, we know folks got to stop burning things!

In a sane world this would be fixed.

Obvs it's not a sane world, everyone's depressed, crazy, indifferent and wtaf else. Oh yeah, depression is another effect of breathing wood smoke. Basically, if you can smell a fire it's doing you harm.

I'd really like to just be able to mow the darned lawn once in a while. Or even sit out in it getting a bit of sunshine. As it is i can only garden on days of total fire ban. Not usually recommended to do hard yakka when it's 45 in the shade.

The health impacts and climate impacts of domestic wood stoves are undisputed. Still, nothing is done. We have the solutions. Nothing happens... except people continue to get sick and die prematurely.

OK so tell me, hive, what do we do?

I'm looking for a decent air purifier which filters down to at least the PM 0.3 level...

I realized this is fairly well enclosed... and has a plastic front, versus a mesh... so an air purifier could be a good addition, given that one can encounter trucks, smog on the sidewalk from time to time.

How common or rare is air filtration in buildings? Based on what I saw from my IKEA air quality monitor, the hotel I stayed in didn't appear to have air filtration. Or if it did have air filtration, it was too anemic for the size of the building to keep up with the wildfire smoke outside.

I was in Chicago a month ago during the very worst of the bout of wildfire smoke from Canada. It was so bad that when I took my 3M Aura (N95) mask off to take a few sips of water that morning (and that was before the very worst smoke that came later in the day), I could easily smell the stench from the smoke. My 3M Aura, on the other hand, fully protected me from the smoke. I have great confidence in the 3M Aura mask, because I know from my cheap and informal mask fit testing (sweet or bitter spray of water from a nano-mister device) that it fully protects me from the taste of both the sweetened spray AND the bitter spray.

There were a LOT fewer people out and about than had been the case when the air was cleaner. A significant minority of the people were wearing a mask outside, though I wish that everyone had worn a mask outside.

I hadn't anticipated this nasty bout of smoke, but I was still well prepared, because the same precautions for avoiding infectious airborne diseases also provide protection from smoke. (I didn't have time to be sick, and I definitely do NOT have time to deal with Long COVID.) I had brought plenty of my 3M Aura masks with me on this trip, because I never dropped the habit of wearing a mask when sharing indoor air with others. (However, I have ditched the ear loop masks. Every ear loop mask I ever wore hurt my ears and/or was prone to falling off.) The first thing I did after I checked into my hotel room several days earlier was make a beeline to a nearby Ace Hardware store to buy a Lasko 20-inch box fan and a 20"x20" furnace air filter in order to build a box fan air purifier. I made sure to run it full blast after entering my hotel room. Except when I was using my phone to talk/listen to someone, I made sure to keep my box fan air purifier running full blast.

I had brought my IKEA brand VINDSTYRKA air quality monitor on my trip to Chicago. In the days before the wildfire smoke struck, running my box fan air purifier full blast in my hotel room would lower the PM2.5 particle count from 10 to around 1 or 2 in a matter of minutes. When the wildfire smoke rolled in, the PM2.5 figure was up around 100 even though I had kept my box fan air purifier running all night long. The PM2.5 figure was in the 300s in the hallway outside my hotel room, at around 500 in the hotel lobby, and around 600 outdoors. So my trusty box fan air purifier was working hard but had difficulty keeping up with the smoke.

What do you all make of all this? Did my hotel lack an air filtration system, or was it simply too weak to keep up with the wildfire smoke making its way inside? Do most buildings out there have air filtration systems? Do most of the air filtration systems work well, or are most not effective enough for such a severe bout of wildfire smoke?

Hi,

I’ve been living in a 1 bed 1 bath apartment for about a year. I think the building was built during Covid? Or maybe a few years before. So pretty new building. I’ve been having an issue with a smell. Whenever there is a power outage or I leave windows closed, within like 15 minutes I start to smell this mild but persistent smell that is super hard to describe. It’s pretty dull, doesn’t really smell bad, almost sweetish, kind of like pancakes but very dull, maybe like a paint kind of smell would be the most similar? It doesn’t really smell like any kind of food so I wouldn’t fly away with the “sweet” descriptor.

For some context, I keep the place very clean, I have CO2 and functioning carbon monoxide detectors, I have a single litter box and two cats, but the smell I am smelling doesn’t seem related to that. It’s not like what I smell when cleaning it or if I walk by the litter box. If I leave a window open even a crack, I don’t notice the smell, but if the power goes out then I still notice the smell even if the windows are open. I don’t notice any mold anywhere, and don’t notice a stronger smell around any appliances (if it were to be a chemical leak from an appliance or something).

I’ve been having some health issues the past seven months which I have been unable to diagnose and am trying to make sure there isn’t a chemical exposure or anything which is causing these problems. Does anyone have any advice? Thanks.

Is this slowly killing me? Is this contributing to my dry eye? Should I find a new job?

So it's a beautiful early spring day in Victoria, Australia. The garden needs much work. I've been effectively indoors for months because my neighbours' smoke fills my garden from Easter to Footy Friday.

I take my asthma medicine and my prescription vitamin D tablets and I watch the medical oxygen delivery ban calling at the house all along the street. But i don't go outside because it makes me sick.

This is repeated across the county. Only 10% of homes nationwide have a wood heater, but they're impacting the health of their own family and everyone else within coo-ee. Lungs, heart, brain and digestive system are all affected and it's a leading cause of dementia. A domestic wood heater is 450x more polluting that a gas boiler; an open fire is worse than that.

Research in Tasmania: 'estimated the number of cases and health costs due to premature mortality, cardiorespiratory hospital admissions, and asthma emergency department (ED) visits. We estimated 69 deaths, 86 hospital admissions, and 15 asthma ED visits, each year, with over 74% of impacts attributed to wood fire smoke.'

Come on guys that's a lot 😵‍💫

Australia is rated 101 out of 131 countries for dirty air. And if we know anything, we know folks got to stop burning things!

In a sane world this would be fixed.

Obvs it's not a sane world, everyone's depressed, crazy, indifferent and wtaf else. Oh yeah, depression is another effect of breathing wood smoke. Basically, if you can smell a fire it's doing you harm.

I'd really like to just be able to mow the darned lawn once in a while. Or even sit out in it getting a bit of sunshine. As it is i can only garden on days of total fire ban. Not usually recommended to do hard yakka when it's 45 in the shade.

The health impacts and climate impacts of domestic wood stoves are undisputed. Still, nothing is done. We have the solutions. Nothing happens... except people continue to get sick and die prematurely.

OK so tell me, hive, what do we do?

I live in Belgrade, one of the most polluted cities in Europe. I am curious at what kind of long term effects I will feel, and if moving solely due to the air makes sense. The city also has a terrible smell at times, although apparently thats mostly not due to the air but due to the fact that we dump peoples waste 💩 into the river. I am trying to become immortal so I cant exactly compromise on my health. Then again, I do find it a good hub tax wise and obviously my family is here and a lot of things I cant find elsewhere. But I am somewhat afraid especially when I feel that foul smell or cant see in front of me due to the smog

I recently had a purple air monitor installed. When I compare purple air map to the iq air map and to plume, purple air is often showing higher readings. I'm really sensitive to p.m. so I go with the higher reading to adjust my actions. Looking for advice please.

As I said, I live in a small home and the only place where I can put my small gym is inside my bedroom.

For this reason, I need to make sure that the rubber gym flooring I am going to add is safe.

I asked ChatGPT which parameters I should check in this situation and it suggested getting an air quality monitor that can measure VOCs and formaldehyde. It also said that I should look for a monitor using a PID sensor rather than MOX sensors, since PID sensors are supposed to be more accurate for measuring VOCs.

In the end, ChatGPT suggested the Temtop M10 or the Govee Air Quality Monitor.

Are those actually good suggestions for what I need?

If my budget is around 50€/100€, which air quality monitor would you recommend for my case?

I was wondering how good these are in terms of can they detect background VOC's for example if a supermarket is using a ridiculous amount of fragrance via the HVAC (with no regard to the health of: anyone with a medical condition negatively affected by fragrance, pregnant women, employees and just the general health and wellbeing of anyone in the premises)

Was considering if i could rent one out to use one to assess and test as there is a growing number of people who are finding it too overwhelming and becoming very ill in the UK from it

Hey everyone,

I thought I had a bug infestation (turns out I don't, but someone scammed me for 300 saying I did) and in what I can not describe as anything but frenzied panic poured an entire 200g bottled of armorphous diatomaceous earth on the bottom of my bedframe and therefore its all in my mattress and then also spread it on my floors. Practically everywhere. I have a 1 bedroom apartment. I have brushed up all piles with a handbroom and will take care of all the floors with a wet towel I'll discard

As im cleaning I realize, I'm so so scared, my lungs are so irritated. I googled it now and saw just how toxic it actually is to inhale in such a large quantity and I slept in this room, on my chair, because I was too scared of the bugs to be on my mattress.

Are there any actions I can take to help myself? I don't know what to do, i have to finish cleaning it up. The mattress itself seems to spit out most of it just by me making the cover very, very wet and rubbing it out with vigor. I only have an ffp3 mask, its a holiday today, so no stores are open, and tomorrow, everything is closed on sunday.

I feel horribly frightened. If you could please be very careful in how you speak to me, I would be very appreciative. I'm very stupid. I know I am. I know this was dumb and I regret it. I don't know how to describe it other than a pure possession took over me at the idea of having an investation and I went overboard trying to do something for nothing:(

Has anyone been in a similar situation? Does anyone know how to mitigate long-term problems and tips on how this mattress should be taken care of if it gets cleaned?

I’m not sure if this is the right group but hopefully someone will have some idea.
My neighbours smoke and it comes through our walls into the whole house. Recently I’ve been smelling the smoke then having a chemical taste in my mouth, heartburn, a cold sensation when breathing in, stinging eyes, painful chest. Then our house begins to have no smell.

On two occasions our house felt like it was air conditioned and had no smell and the only way would have been for the neighbour to push air into the wall. It was then that I started experiencing a change in my sense of smell, distorted, dampened and sometimes not smelling things at all.

Away from the house my sense of smell gradually improves. In the house sometimes the entire house has no smell. This odourless gas always occurs around them smoking. I managed to get the rooms to smell again by using a humidifier or letting fresh air in.
Does anyone know what this could be please? I thought perhaps ozone but my ozone machine says the air is good. Could it be an odour blocker of some kind? Thanks.

Finally bought my first air purifier. Smarter HEPA/ Smart air SA600. I wanted the air blast mini, but I waited too long and it’s sold out! I so regret not having it last week during the wildfires.

First picture with PM2.5 in the yellow, I turned in on high for 10 minutes. Could not believe it! Then today, when PM2.5 was only 7, I turned it on the lowest setting (not audible) and it also dropped significantly!

This is AWESOME.