r/AirQuality

I work dayshift from home in a 10x10 room with the door closed all day. By 3 pm, I’m already slow and unfocused even with coffee. I tried nutrient boosts, sleep aids and even a quick yoga break but none of it works. I’m starting to think it’s air. Researched much and I’ve seen people recommend that the next best thing is to get a CO₂ monitor designed for homes to check if a room is poorly ventilated. The logic makes sense, you can’t really improve what you can’t measure.

For those who have one, did you notice a difference in focus after getting that right ventilation based on readings? And what specs actually matter for accuracy? I don’t just want a sensor that smooths everything when it's not.

We had our ceiling sawn into to try and sort out a mould problem after a leak and asbestos was found which proved to be the bad stuff after testing . He brushed up the plasterboard and asbestos which apparently causes more disturbance to fibres making them go throughout the house and onto fabrics like sofas etc and our kitchen /living room is open plan. We didn’t know straight away it was going to be positive so we stayed in our home and lived normally for 5 days . We have now been told by insurance that it’s probably not safe and that any fabric sofas, curtains etc will have to be thrown away for contamination purposes . I’m so worried about this I have asthma and we have been living there as normal

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?

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?

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.

We have been finding bits of what appear to be fiberglass ductwork on our floors. That's a whole separate issue, but we will probably be calling in HVAC to look around.

We live in a rental home built in 1957. The home has pink fiberglass insulation. In my reading about what these weird bits could be, I discovered that old fiberglass insulation contains formaldehyde which is not typically a danger unless heated or subject to humidity, then it off-gasses. It gets extremely hot in our attic here, we live in GA. We can literally feel and smell the hot air standing under vents/the attic hatch. The attic is at least somewhat ventilated. We had a leak awhile back above our laundry room which was fixed but who knows what remains up there. We have an infant in the home and it has never occurred to me that formaldehyde could be getting into the house. We are only here for 5 more months.​ I doubt the landlord would agree to pay for this (or the HVAC), but we are prepared to if need be. Just concerned about our little one and pets with the cancer risk.

Is this a concern or am I overthinking it? if so, are there any reliable tests I can do myself?

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?

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.

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?

  Popular air quality monitors like Purple Air, Air Gradient, IKEA etc. use sensors primarily from Plantower or Sensirion. These sensors already measure, calculate and report the sensing elements like PM2.5, PM10, VOC, temperature. etc. on their UART port. The air quality monitors read these values off the UART port and display it on a fancy screen or send it to cloud. So, in essence, they are acting like dumb terminals. Their firmware is just read values and display values or send values to cloud. Also, some of them are presented as lifestyle devices, so generally are priced higher.

Also, these sensors cannot accurately measure particulate matter of sizes greater than about 6um, so only PM2.5 is reliable. Mold, Pollen etc have higher dimensions than these. Measuring higher particle sizes may require a different approach.

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 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

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.

Just posted separate question about potential solution to this problem. But have house that was renovated a few years back and is pretty tight. When we cook bacon that smell lingers for a long time. Was looking for a way to air out the house.

Option 1(other post)- aprilaire 8145 fresh air unit on the first floor zone. Don't think I would need on 2nd floor

Option 2- whole house fan. Is there a modern version of the old school whole house fan with those loud louvers? Would need to crack a window and then turn on. But then that air won't be conditioned, hence the idea for option 1 but not sure if that thing running just a little bit each hour is going to clean out the air quick enough

Option 3-open to suggestions.

House is about 2k sq ft. Unable to have hood vent of stove vented outside due to framing setup. Bosch ids ducted heat pumps on each floor.