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Comment by gpm

13 hours ago

CO2 - I'm thrilled with anything less than 800 ppm (half justified by being the lowest number I've ever seen a study suggest might have health effects, half justified by being at a point where I personally don't notice that I'm more drowsy).

PM2.5 - My impression is the health risks here are more cumulative exposure (and include things I'd like to go without in my life, like alzheimers) and a pretty straight line of "lower is better all the way to zero". The WHO's guideline is mean exposure of 5 µg/m³ so I guess I'd adopt that if I had to put a number on it. (But it's a mean, I wouldn't worry about briefly exceeding it)

PM10 - No real opinion (I'd rather worry about PM2.5)

VOC index - I'm not sure this is a standardized thing, but the version I've come across is an index relative to the average that particular sensor has seen in the last 24 hours. So there's no standard possible here.

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As for a gas range I would worry about NOX considering the studies with them causing and aggravating asthma. That said your CO2 levels are low so I suspect you might have sufficient ventilation that this isn't a huge issue for you (especially if that ventilation is in the form of a fume hood over your stove that you actually use).

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gpm

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teravor  10 hours ago

CO2 by itself doesn't appear to be a problem until some truly absurd levels are somehow achieved.

CO2 is usually a proxy for air quality because outside is usually something consistent like 400 therefore deviation from that figure indicates staleness.

  • gpm  10 hours ago

    I don't have the list of relevant studies I've read on hand atm but there was at least one where they simply pumped in CO2 (or didn't) and had an effect showing pretty directly that CO2 itself is problematic at reasonably low levels - as well as potentially being an excellent proxy for other air quality issues. Problematic in a "makes you drowsy/stupid" type of way - not a "kills you" type of way. Though there's also at least one correlative studies suggesting it might have long term health effects (which really wouldn't be surprising if it has any short term effects).

    Besides which, proxy or directly high CO2 means you should ventilate...

    • teravor  6 hours ago

      the military has conducted studies where submariners were exposed to a PPM of 1000s with no ill effect. I suppose they were trying to determine how hard they need to scrub.

      having said that, it's possible they omitted what other gasses and %s they used for advantage. there could be some mitigation possible there.

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