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recent bookmarks from jmStudy: Air purifier use at daycare centres cut kids' sick days by a third2023-11-29T13:22:18+00:00
https://yle.fi/a/74-20062381
jm
Use of air purifiers at two daycare centres in Helsinki led to a reduction in illnesses and absences among children and staff, according to preliminary findings of a new [year-long] study led by E3 Pandemic Response.
"Children were clearly less sick in daycare centres where air purification devices were used — down by around 30 percent," Sanmark explained.
On average, daycare centre-aged children suffer 10-13 infectious illnesses every year, with each illness lasting from one to three weeks, according to the research. Meanwhile, kids between the ages of 1-3 come down with flu-like symptoms between five to eight times a year — and children also often suffer stomach bugs, on top of that. Kids are particularly prone to catching colds after returning to daycare after their summer break. Those illnesses are often shared by the kids' parents and daycare staff, prompting absences from work. Sanmark said that employers face costs of around 370 euros for one day of an employee's sick leave.
"It would be a big savings if we could get rid of 30 percent of sick days spread by children, as well as the illnesses that go home to parents," Sanmark said.
(via Fergal)]]>air-quality air health medicine childcare children disease air-filtrationhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:be3f6c98bc83/Bitcoin killed between 3,350 and 13,400 people during 20212022-01-02T15:05:34+00:00
https://twitter.com/martinmroz/status/1477474482726055940?t=DDVA7WFZOF8_npZxD3yomQ&s=03
jmbitcoin crypto climate-change health air-quality coal power 2021 cryptocurrencyhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:8a1c90fbce99/Portable Air Cleaner (HEPA filter) buying guide2021-12-14T10:17:42+00:00
https://cleanaircrew.org/air-cleaners/
jmhepa filtering air air-quality covid-19 health gadgets tipshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:f2324a73f5b3/Ikea Vindriktning Air Quality Sensor Review and Accuracy2021-12-06T15:44:10+00:00
https://www.airgradient.com/resources/ikea-vindriktning-accuracy/
jmikea air-quality pm2.5 pm10 particulates home devices gadgetshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:d3b7c04fba4d/Diesel exhaust linked to Alzheimers and dementia2021-11-08T11:15:27+00:00
https://www.pnas.org/content/117/25/13856
jmAfter controlling for a range of health and socioeconomic factors, including hypertension, education, and housing values, they found that relatively fewer older people in counties with newly improved air quality developed dementia compared with counties without recent changes. Overall, evidence linked the federal regulation to nearly 182,000 fewer people with dementia in 2013.
]]>dementia alzheimers brain health diesel emissions air-quality pollution airhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:c977aa3a29d4/Why indoor spaces are still prime COVID hotspots2021-03-31T09:47:11+00:00
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00810-9
jmOn 28 March 2020, two months after the WHO had declared COVID-19 a global health emergency, the agency broadcast a public-health message on Twitter and Facebook. “FACT: #COVID19 is NOT airborne,” it said, labelling claims to the contrary as misinformation. But evidence quickly established that the virus is transmitted by air, and researchers roundly criticized the agency.
The WHO updated its advice on SARS-CoV-2 transmission three months later, acknowledging the possibility that airborne transmission might occur in some community settings. Airborne transmission in “crowded and inadequately ventilated spaces over a prolonged period of time with infected persons cannot be ruled out”, the updated advice says.
Yuguo Li, a building environment engineer at the University of Hong Kong, says that he is disappointed it took the WHO and other health authorities so long. “We would have saved a lot of people” if airborne transmission was recognized earlier, he says.
]]>aerosols transmission airborne who covid-19 misinformation air-quality airhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:bdad19a5f619/Ventilation | CDC2020-12-08T22:06:44+00:00
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/ventilation.html
jmWhen indoors, ventilation mitigation strategies help to offset the absence of natural wind and reduce the concentration of viral particles in the indoor air. The lower the concentration, the less likely some of those viral particles can be inhaled into your lungs; contact your eyes, nose, and mouth; or fall out of the air to accumulate on surfaces. Protective ventilation practices and interventions can reduce the airborne concentration, which reduces the overall viral dose to occupants.
Below is a list of ventilation interventions that can help reduce the concentration of virus particles in the air, such as SARS-CoV-2. They represent a list of “tools in the mitigation toolbox,” each of which can be effective on their own. Implementing multiple tools at the same time is consistent with CDC mitigation strategies and increases overall effectiveness. These ventilation interventions can reduce the risk of exposure to the virus and reduce the spread of disease, but they will not eliminate risk completely.
]]>covid-19 advice cdc best-practices ventilation air air-quality sars-cov-2https://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:2bb29e6df1a8/Covid Winter is Coming. Could Humidifiers Help? | WIRED2020-11-12T15:10:30+00:00
https://www.wired.com/story/covid-winter-is-coming-could-humidifiers-help/?utm_brand=wired&utm_social-type=earned
jmafter three months of data crunching, they found that the most powerful correlation between national numbers of daily new coronavirus cases and daily Covid-19 deaths was indoor relative humidity. Even controlling for dozens of other factors, the data showed that as indoor relative humidity went up during the summer months in the northern hemisphere, deaths plummeted. In the southern hemisphere, the opposite was true—as humidity fell during those nations’ winter months, deaths began to climb. “It’s so powerful, it’s crazy,” says [Stephanie] Taylor.
That work has not yet been published. But Taylor believes it’s the strongest evidence yet that humidity needs to be as much a part of the conversation about containing Covid-19 as is discussion of ventilation, masks, and hand hygiene. “It’s hard to prioritize one intervention over another; we need all of them,” says Taylor. “Humidifiers aren’t a replacement for masks or social distancing or ventilation. But when you have more humidification, it enhances all these other things we’re already doing.” At higher humidities, respiratory particles grow faster and fall to the ground earlier, so there’s a better chance that staying 6 feet apart from infectious people really will dilute how many bits of their aerosolized virus you might happen to inhale. In a recent modeling study, Japanese researchers found that air with 30 percent relative humidity can carry more than twice the number of infectious aerosols, compared to air with relative humidity levels of 60 percent or higher. That also means masks are more likely to block more of the particles coming out of people’s noses and mouths, because they tend to be better at trapping bigger particles than smaller ones. And it means that air purifiers (even cheap, DIY ones) will filter out a larger proportion of potentially infectious particles.
]]>covid-19 aerosols humidity humidifiers air air-quality health infectionhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:a96232b1781d/Air pollution is much worse than we thought. Climate change is far from the only problem with fossil fuels. - Vox2020-08-14T09:49:33+00:00
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/8/12/21361498/climate-change-air-pollution-us-india-china-deaths
jm“Over the next 50 years, keeping to the 2°C pathway would prevent roughly 4.5 million premature deaths, about 3.5 million hospitalizations and emergency room visits, and approximately 300 million lost workdays in the US.”
All that prevented death, illness, and lost productivity adds up to a lot of savings: The avoided deaths are valued at more than $37 trillion. The avoided health care spending due to reduced hospitalizations and emergency room visits exceeds $37 billion, and the increased labor productivity is valued at more than $75 billion. On average, this amounts to over $700 billion per year in benefits to the US from improved health and labor alone, far more than the cost of the energy transition.
Importantly, many of the benefits can be accessed in the near term. Right now, air pollution leads to almost 250,000 premature deaths a year in the US. Within a decade, aggressive decarbonization could reduce that toll by 40 percent; over 20 years, it could save around 1.4 million American lives that would otherwise be lost to air quality.
Of the potential yearly deaths prevented, Rep. Robin Kelly of Illinois remarked at the hearing, “That’s a huge number. That’s nearly three times the number of lives we lose in car accidents every year. It’s twice the number of deaths caused by opioids in the past few years. And it’s even more than the number of Americans we lose to diabetes each year.”
]]>pollution air energy environment climate-change air-quality health decarbonizationhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:d2ff481fa6a9/How to use ventilation and air filtration to prevent the spread of coronavirus indoors2020-08-13T09:50:46+00:00
https://theconversation.com/how-to-use-ventilation-and-air-filtration-to-prevent-the-spread-of-coronavirus-indoors-143732
jmcovid-19 aerosols air air-quality co2 air-purifiers schoolshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:0c2b930bb1ec/Harvard-UC Boulder Portable Air Cleaner Calculator for Schools2020-08-04T23:12:39+00:00
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NEhk1IEdbEi_b3wa6gI_zNs8uBJjlSS-86d4b7bW098/edit#gid=0
jmair-cleaners filtration spreadsheets covid-19 schools kids air-quality airhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:26cb85dde2e2/Room to Breathe: My Quest to Clean Up My Home's Filthy Air2019-12-20T14:49:11+00:00
https://www.wired.com/story/the-quest-for-clean-air/?itm_campaign=BottomRelatedStories_Sections_1
jmair air-quality particulates pm2.5 pm10 health paranoia homeshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:1bc1a7e0be78/Thomas Talhelm's DIY air purifier2019-11-07T10:28:44+00:00
https://www.quora.com/What-is-a-life-hack-that-you-think-everybody-should-know/answer/Thomas-Talhelm?ch=10&share=0a302e89&srid=iLBX
jmI tested it over and over—hundreds of days, with a control room, with a stronger fan, against the big brand purifiers that I borrowed from my rich friends. Eventually, I saw enough data that I was convinced. This $30 DIY purifier was removing significant amounts of tiny particulate from my Beijing bedroom. I wanted to tell the world that those $1,000 purifiers were ripoffs. I made all the data and testing methods open source. I wrote up the instructions for how to make one.
]]>air air-quality beijing hepa filters filtering diy hackshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:d824cc90cde3/luftdaten.info2019-10-27T21:39:22+00:00
https://luftdaten.info/
jmair-quality metrics pm2.5 pm10 particulates europe citizen-science science measurementhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:4fbd20cebefe/Multi-Sensor IoT Environmental Sensor Box With CircuitPython2019-06-10T13:07:36+00:00
https://learn.adafruit.com/remote-iot-environmental-sensor
jmJust add a power outlet and a WiFi network and stream time and location stamped environmental readings to AdafruitIO.
]]>adafruit sensors iot maker hacks air-quality temperature environment metricshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:ef4bd6240b15/EPA opposed rules that would have exposed VW's cheating2015-09-28T09:34:01+00:00
http://www.wired.com/2015/09/epa-opposes-rules-couldve-exposed-vws-cheating/
jm[...] Two months ago, the EPA opposed some proposed measures that would help potentially expose subversive code like the so-called “defeat device” software VW allegedly used by allowing consumers and researchers to legally reverse-engineer the code used in vehicles. EPA opposed this, ironically, because the agency felt that allowing people to examine the software code in vehicles would potentially allow car owners to alter the software in ways that would produce more emissions in violation of the Clean Air Act. The issue involves the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA), which prohibits anyone from working around “technological protection measures” that limit access to copyrighted works. The Library of Congress, which oversees copyrights, can issue exemptions to those prohibitions that would make it legal, for example, for researchers to examine the code to uncover security vulnerabilities.
]]>dmca volkswagen vw law code open-source air-quality diesel cheating regulation us-politicshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:9f3478ec3465/How VW tricked the EPA's emissions testing system2015-09-23T09:46:09+00:00
http://www.wired.com/2015/09/vw-fool-epa-couldnt-trick-chemistry/?mbid=social_twitter
jmIn July 2015, CARB did some follow up testing and again the cars failed—the scrubber technology was present, but off most of the time. How this happened is pretty neat. Michigan’s Stefanopolou says computer sensors monitored the steering column. Under normal driving conditions, the column oscillates as the driver negotiates turns. But during emissions testing, the wheels of the car move, but the steering wheel doesn’t. That seems to have have been the signal for the “defeat device” to turn the catalytic scrubber up to full power, allowing the car to pass the test. Stefanopolou believes the emissions testing trick that VW used probably isn’t widespread in the automotive industry. Carmakers just don’t have many diesels on the road. And now that number may go down even more.
Depressing stuff -- but at least they think VW's fraud wasn't widespread.]]>fraud volkswagen vw diesel emissions air-quality epa carb catalytic-converters testinghttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:cb59fb1ac244/