Cleaning Air

When the air quality was particularly bad from the smoke from so many fires, my son decided it would be a great time to fry up some burgers on the stove top. I don't have a BBQ because I mainly don't eat meat, so we fry burgers. But he heated the oil too hot and the kitchen filled with smoke, so we opened the windows even though we were in the red for particulate levels!! Opened windows made it all worse.

So we all threw on N95s, and I remembered our Corsi-Rosenthal box can do double duty of cleaning the air of particulate matter, not just viruses. My CO2 monitor tracks particulates in the air as well as CO2, so we could watch, in real time, as the levels decreased enough to close the windows, and then get right down to single digits so we could take off our masks. 

It's really too bad the monitors don't track the level of viruses in the air (although something like that might become a reality). That would be a game changer!! Watching the levels reduce as the smoke cleared in my kitchen made it crystal clear that CR boxes work. We often need to see it to believe it. It's hard to do that with microscopic viruses. 

CO2 levels in a room are just an indication of how much we're breathing one another's exhalations, not how much Covid is present.

Some school boards are talking about removing HEPA units as they improve mechanical ventilation in each classroom, but that misses the different tasks of ventilation and filtration. Although excellent ventilation can help us breath less lung backwash from one another, when there are many Covid cases (or RSV or flippin' leprosy!) in the room, or too many particulates from wildfire smoke blowing our way, then we need some air filtration units in the room to clean it. 

They really work.

PSA: Ontario Pollution Concentrations

You can find how much particulate matter is in the air in your community at this link, Click on the little graph beside the number to see, in real time, how things are right now and whether or not it's okay to hang out outside or even open a window. Air quality index forecasts are here, and a fire and smoke map is here.

You can tape a MERV11 (Filtrete 1500) filter or better to open windows to filter out any pollutants, and an N95 will filter out particles, but can't filter gases like carbon monoxide (or oxygen, as we've been explaining for years now), so check those levels at the first link at the top of this post. 

If you haven't been masking for Covid because you've been convinced masks don't work and suffocate people or otherwise harm them, it's time to get over that and get comfortable wearing them outside when the ratings in your area are higher than normal. If it's yellow, you're okay to be outside if you're not in the 'sensitive' class: asthma, elderly, children. But avoid the outdoors if it's orange or red.

And, don't forget, Ford cut the firefighting budget by 67% back in 2019. He says we'll be fine, but I'm not so sure. 

In case you think it's fine to just ignore the smokey hazy enveloping the area, experts say, 

"Some research suggests that wildfire smoke 'may be more toxic' to the lungs than standard urban air pollution since it contains a distinct mix of particulates that activate inflammatory cells 'deep in the lungs' while hindering other cells that can dampen the inflammatory response later. These same particles also can migrate from the lungs and 'disrupt and upset the natural tone of blood vessels."