By Andrei on April 13, 2013
It’s (probably) in your house.
It has been called “the silent killer”.
Most people know that smoking is the leading cause to lung cancer.
But very few people know what is the second leading cause, causing thousands of deaths each year in the US: it’s the colorless, odorless, tasteless radioactive gas Radon.
I recently spoke with someone who’s father just died of lung cancer. This was someone who never smoked a cigarette in their life. He was never told about the dangers of Radon or the possibility that it may be in their house. He of course didn’t test his house’s Radon levels.
Please take a minute and go through this informative EPA guide:
http://www.epa.gov/radon/pubs/citguide.html
Posted in air quality and health | Tagged indoor air pollutants, lung cancer, radon
By Andrei on March 4, 2013
If you’re interested in Indoor Air Quality and health in general, we suggest you subscribe to our Facebook page. We share interesting links and information that we find. As we try not to double post, we either write an article on this blog and post the link on our Facebook page, or we just post something on Facebook. There’s a propagation asymmetry there 
Posted in airplusplus | Tagged airplusplus facebook page
By Andrei on February 24, 2013
There are reports that Google recently decided to close two of it’s buildings after the air monitors it had installed indicated pollution with a dangerous VOC.
The pollution seems to be in the ground for around 35 years (!) and it was apparently created by tech companies of those times, Fairchild and Intel. Intel is a big corporation today also, so we became interested where are their production facilities today. Had they all been in Asia, then maybe they just exported the pollution instead of cleaning it. But to their honor, Intel has most of it’s production centers still in the US, so they must be doing the right thing with the environment today.
The air contaminant is reportedly trichloroethylene, a volatile organic compound that is “reasonably believed to be a human carcinogen”. Have they not been evacuated, Google’s employees health would have been at risk.
I say, bravo Google for doing the right thing! All companies should monitor the quality of the indoor air and be prepared to take extreme measures like this.
Posted in air quality and health, air quality around the world | Tagged google, Pollution, voc
By Admin on February 13, 2013
I just read an article about a recent study made in India. It seems that outdoor air quality is the 5th cause of death in India.
Guess what the second cause of death was… common, take a guess.
It’s poor indoor air quality. Now, we’re talking extreme levels of air pollution. But it’s a very sobering article.
I’d say assess your indoor air quality and keep an eye on it. It pays in time added to life expectancy, the type of good you can’t buy with money.
Posted in air quality around the world | Tagged air quality india
By Andrei on January 31, 2013
I’m an engineer, so let’s go at it methodically.
This is what we know:
1. There are studies that confirm there is a direct relation between the air quality and the general life expectancy of people. For example, this Harvard School of Public Health study, from December 2012, clearly states that: “reductions in air pollution levels would continue to benefit public health”. The study does not mention “indoor air”, just a general “air quality”. This study also cites other studies, that concluded: “reductions in air pollution are associated with reductions in adverse health effects and improved life expectancy“.
2. There is a report from 1989, “U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 1989. Report to Congress on indoor air quality: Volume 2″, we found it via the United States Environmental Protection Agency. In this report, we get shocking news: We spend most of our time indoors! Now that’s what I call a useful study. However, it does serve a purpose to our demonstration, saying that we spend “approximately 90 percent” of our time indoors. When indoors, we have to be careful about indoor air quality.
3. Through the same environmental agency mentioned earlier we found another study, where it says that indoor air ”concentrations of some pollutants are often 2 to 5 times higher than typical outdoor concentrations”
Just a small recap: so we now know that (1) bad air shortens the life span of people, (2) modern people spend most time indoors and (3) indoor air is generally of much more poor quality than the outdoor air ( there are multiple reasons why this is true, I’ll go at it in a subsequent article )
We can now offer an answer to the question this post asks: Yes, there is a link between Indoor Air Quality and Life Expectancy: when indoor air is of poor quality, we can be sure that this negatively affects the life span of those who breathe that air.
Posted in air quality and health | Tagged Indoor Air Quality, Life Expectancy, Pollution
By Andrei on January 14, 2013
This text will probably seem common sense knowledge to most people, but I think it’s important to think about how the air flows the next time we want to “let some fresh air” get inside the room.
The warmer air has the tendency to go higher in a room, while the air that is more cold will stay low. Also low will usually stay chemical pollutants, which are heavier than air. (As a sidenote, children usually play on the floor and that’s the lowest you can be in a room. Take this into consideration if you have children and make sure the air in the room is clean of pollutants)
Now it’s winter season in half of the world and windows get opened with much scarcity, as it gets cold inside really quickly. But we must still open them!
I found out a way to get the Carbon Dioxide level in my room to drop very fast: I slightly open a window and slightly open a door. I am lucky to have them both communicate with the outdoor, so when they’re opened, there’s fresh air coming from the other side.
In my case the hot, high in CO2, air will exit the room through the window and the cold, fresh air will come in through the door.
That’s why it’s recommended you open two, not one windows or doors ( or one window and one door ), preferably from different sides of the room. I have my window and door on the same wall, but air still flows very quickly.
By opening both a window and a door, I found out that the CO2 level dropped dramatically faster than before, when I left the door wide open for more time. It doesn’t get cold, as the time needed for them to stay open is much shorter and I get more oxygen in the room while having the CO2 out the window, literally
Posted in tips and tricks | Tagged airing the room, fresh air during the winter, lower room CO2 level
By Andrei on January 13, 2013
A recent article in the New York Times is reporting that pollution levels in Beijing have gone beyond the maximum level of the scale. How is it possible for a value to be bigger than the one considered the biggest possible value? Apparently, when designing the scale, researchers have underestimated the amount of pollution China can emit.
Beijing is a nightmare for anyone interested in having a healthy air to breathe. It is in the proximity of many factories, has a huge amount of car traffic and, to make everything worse, there are some hills around it that stops the flow of polluted air outside the area.
If you are living in Beijing, it is an absolute must to have a very good ventilation system in your house, with regularly cleaned HEPA/ activated carbon air filters. It’s also very useful to have VOC air purifiers running, that can filter particles smaller than 0.3 microns.
Also, it’s better to keep windows closed during day time, that’s usually when pollution is worst, due to the car traffic.
I would suggest having a few plants in the house as well, but am not sure if there’s enough light for them to live. I’ve never been to Beijing, but I read that the sun is most of the time covered by smog.
If you’re living in Beijing and have some tips or personal experience to share about improving the air quality, please do so in the comments below.
Posted in air quality around the world
By Andrei on January 13, 2013
Poor Indoor Air Quality is an issue which, in our opinion, should be getting much more attention from regular people. We are used to leave air quality out for the local authorities to solve and we complain whenever we read about record-high levels of pollution.
We can’t control much the quality level of the outdoor air, at least not without other people joining in to help – by leaving their cars at home for example.
But we alone can have a big impact on the quality of the air in our homes and offices. It is said that the modern person spends as much as 90% of time indoors (it’s a scary big number, but that’s what the US Environmental Protection Agency says )
AirPlusPlus is the first step in our vision of how a person should treat the quality of the air they breathe. Stay tuned!
Posted in airplusplus | Tagged air quality
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