Comment by ravenstine

I can confirm that you really don't want to breathe in any of that crap.

A year and a half ago I developed symptoms of what was some form of bronchitis. Lots of mucus, constantly coughing, etc. I was pretty freaking sick. I tend to wait some things like this out, but it wasn't going away so I went to a doctor and got some medications including albuterol and some kind of steroid (prednisone, I think). It got a little more manageable, but didn't seem to be getting any better.

One day, I realized how much of a dumbass I was the whole time.

The apartment I was living in had a laundry room, but it was tiny and I got tired of both hauling laundry up and down multiple flights of stairs and having to fight for time with the few machines that were there. I bought a small washer and dryer pair from Black & Decker which were designed for apartment living. Kinda off topic, but there were no hookups in my unit, so I had to jerryrig a water connection using some collapsible garden hoses that connected to my shower and its drain. Was kinda hilarious but worked great.

I made the mistake of thinking that I could just allow the dryer to blow through two sets of lint traps and have a fan blow air out of the window to manage moisture and remaining lint making it through. What I didn't realize was how inadequate the traps were. Because I worked from home, I spent a lot of time in that bedroom, including when the dryer was running. I was breathing in all sorts of stuff without knowing it.

Once I stopped hanging out in that room while the dryer was running, bought an air purifier, and made sure to frequently clean my apartment of dust, my symptoms rapidly started to go away.

If I had to do all of that again, and I couldn't just have the dryer blow directly out the window, I would find some way to have it do a second pass through a HEPA filter, perhaps after drying the air with something like calcium chloride.

I shudder to think of all the microplastic fibers that remain somewhere in my body.