I'm all for cleaner air (especially reducing dangerous gases and pollutants), but at what point does the over-sterilization of our environment (specifically with regard to microbes) do more harm than good? People in my family suffer from various allergies, and many suspect there may be at least some link to not being exposed to enough allergens at an early age (father was a surgeon and our home was always clean – nearly to the level of an O.R.).
It’s not just about the #’s. There is a huge difference between indoor air composition (which humans haven’t evolved for millions of years to account for) and outdoor air composition for the same, say, PM2.5 metric. E.g. indoor air might be mostly dead skin and dust mites, outdoor air might be mostly burned ash and bacteria, etc.
Unfortunately, the fact is that most people are now spending something like 20 hours a day inside… there is no easy answer. I sometimes wonder how much the sterilization hypothesis is wrapped up in the effect of prolonged indoor air exposure.
This is why I feel a run or bike ride outside is worth far more than the same amount of time indoors in a gym. Combined with a bit of weight lifting (which you can do at home), it's a pretty good total body workout.
I am happy many folks around where I live started to go out for their exercise during COVID but I hope they keep that outdoor habit after the pandemic is over.
If you can take your bike ride where there isn’t much traffic and more nature by any means it’d probably be not only better for your body but also for your mind. A lot of us are spending way too much time indoors and should take any ocasion to be outdoors
I switched from biking to work to riding a spin bike after the pandemic lockdowns, and since I'm no longer riding on roads with traffic, I've probably increased my life expectancy since I'm not going to get hit by a car in my livingroom.
I usually ride my bike around 5:30-7am when traffic usually isn't a concern. I also choose routes that are also low-traffic but still rewarding (decent climb and scenery).
If you look at statistics there are more fatal crashes between 4am and 8am than between the 4 hours after. [1]
I looked it up, because I would've thought the missing light during night and dawn times and the more sleepy drivers probably offset any safety gains from less traffic on the roads. It's also much easier to speed with less traffic.
That sleepyness is a factor in car crashes can also be observed with increased rates shortly after winter/summer time changes.
True, but I think the parent comment was referring to less congestion. When it comes to bicycling, I always feel that it's my responsibility as a rider to look out for my own safety. Always regard all and any cars as being driven at 4AM by a drunk driver - regardless of time of day. In the middle of the day that means keeping track of multiple vehicles in different directions relative to my path.
During low traffic, there may be one vehicle to keep track of, and few pedestrians or other bikes.
That safe environment is quickly turned into an enabler for more aggressive and careless riding though. For fun and for getting from A to B faster.
Interesting - the data you shared isn't bicycle related, just all motor vehicle crashes.
It might be more interesting to look at bicycle fatalities than fatal car crashes [1]. Looking at the time-of-day distribution, fully 50% of such fatalities happen between 3pm-midnight. 6-9am is a higher risk slot (12%), but I'd probably avoid biking during 8-9am regardless.
I usually do the same thing, but most of my route is on a local shared use path. Getting out there before most of the joggers is just so much more relaxing.
The particulate matter that I worry about isn't microbes, it's all the crap that we're creating and putting into our environment with things like power generation and vehicles, which makes up the majority of the small particulate matter.
Radon buildup is also a potential concern if you have your house sealed up. Opening the windows is the best way to clear it, but activated carbon filters should capture it.
Just make sure you're masked when you clean or replace any of the filters.
For radon, we installed a suction fan inside our house that sucks air from under the house. That lowers the pressure under the house, and radon doesn't seep in. It made the measurements go from ~120bq to 20bq.
As far as I am aware unless you are building deep underground or have built your house on radon rich bedrock, or your house is entirely made of granite, this is absolutely not a concern for the average person.
If you are in doubt you can look up what is the expected radon exposure on the ground region where you live. Most people will have a higher radiation exposure from an arm x-ray than from ground leaking Radon.
It's location dependent, but more people live with radon seeping up from the ground than you would think. Some countries now have building codes that demand the foundation gets sealed to prevent it.
"Every building contains radon but the levels are usually low. The chances of a higher level depend on the type of ground. Public Health England has published a map showing where high levels are more likely."
getting a sensor at a reasonable price is tricky since Radon emits Alpha radiation - I managed to get one at around £300
It's not that much of a concern, but mostly because tests are widely available. Test your basement for radon, and only worry about it if the levels are high.
Radon is an alpha emitter which gets into your lungs, so that comparison to an arm x-ray isn't entirely fair. Otherwise I agree, it shouldn't be a concern unless you live in the first floor on granite.
It's right they don't penetrate. However, the lungs is one place they don't need to penetrate, they get direct access to some very valuable (to us) cells in our bodies, which are especially vulnerable to cancer, and do grave damage to them. From 10 to 1000 times more damage than equivalent energy gamma or beta radiation, according to Wikipedia. Radon as a health problem isn't some crank thing.
The composition of airborne particles depends highly on what size you're measuring. The stuff you see when you kick the carpet is the "big" stuff like cotton breaking down.
Two categories, VOC and particles, I don't worry about eliminating from the home.
I aspire to have zero particulates in my home air, it takes some doing. Much of the particles are of human/industrial origin anyway. Exhaust and tire particulate and various broken down human built materials. (and an overabundance of human pieces that fall off and collect in ways that wouldn't happen outside)
I also aspire to have a low CO2 PPM inside, this conflicts with the previous (i.e. it is difficult without intense forced air exchange with the outside to achieve CO2 levels less than twice outside levels.
But to the contrary, I do not use disinfectants ever except in very specific circumstances. I go out of my way to not buy products which make disinfectant claims.
I think human beings need to be out in nature, to regularly come into contact with living soil. Not just "nature" of curated footpaths and manicured, fertilized lawns and parks, but actually getting dirty outside where other organisms live. It's hard to do in cities, and growing up on a farm it still seems absurd to me that I have to aspire and do great organizing to find myself somewhere in a city where I am not standing on a surface that has been engineered by people. The closest I can get is usually the strips of grass along the sidewalks that act as nothing but dog toilets. (I love dogs, but city dogs offend me. They're animals, they want to be outside and not just tethered to you or for the occasional adventure to a park)
An somewhat gross anecdote:
Several weeks ago I got a cut on my foot from some shattered glass that developed into an odd looking infection with red stripes/blotches that I was on the edge of scheduling an appointment for a doctor. I happened to visit a local lake and dipped my toes in for a bit. The next day I was amazed, the redness which had been growing in intensity for a couple of weeks was just completely gone. Maybe it was a coincidence but I strongly believe that whatever was having a grand ol time eating my foot seems to have made a tasty meal for whatever cocktail of microorganisms were hanging out in that lake (I assume it was a fungal infection which was outcompeted by a restored microbiome seeded from the lake)
I aspire to have zero particulates in my home air, it takes some doing. Much of the particles are of human/industrial origin anyway. Exhaust and tire particulate and various broken down human built materials.
Particulates seem to be the easiest to remove -- much easier than VOC's and other gases.
My new furnace has a MERV 11 filter that I've been playing around with in recent days as we've had AQI close to 100.
I have an air quality monitor (that measures PM1, PM2.5 and PM10) in the house, within about 20 minutes of turning on the furnace blower, AQI of 70 inside the house drops down to less than 10, and 20 minutes after that, it's down in the low single digits.
I have a MERV 13 filter that I could put in the furnace, but I'm not sure I need it since the MERV 11 seems to handle it.
Yeah I lived maybe 100 meters from a busy road so I bought an air cleaner out of concern, but also got an Arduino with a serial device monitoring PM 2.5. PM 2.5 was always low teens or single digits, until I blew out a match next to the device and it went to 100s but dipped very quickly, so I think particulates aren't the biggest concern in most houses, unless maybe they spend all day with the windows open.
I tested my indoor sensor (Davis Airlink) by comparing to others in my neighborhood -- I set it up outside on the first bad air quality day we had and an hour later it was with 5 AQI points of the 4 PurpleAir sensors within a quarter mile.
Certainly not professional level calibration, but shows that it's within the ballpark. Unfortunately I don't think there's an official EPA monitoring station within 10 miles so I can't really check it against a calibrated monitor.
Aside from trying to buy a commonly used reliable device, that what the match test was for. When my device was reading 12ppm pm2.5 and a blown out match made it read in the 100s clearly the device is working to some degree of accuracy. I could've checked it outside I guess but I think local air conditions would predominate over any official city average I could have compared it against.
I grew up on a farm with a lot of animals around, and spent a ton of time in the woods until I was 18. I have terrible allergies and asthma, so farm life was pretty awful. YMMV
No, it almost certainly does not. There are lots of reasons why farmers would have less asthma, one being the fact that there is a correlation with asthma and ASD, a correlation with ASD and intellectual excellence and therefore a potential reason why you don’t find many farmers with asthma or other disorders on the autoimmune spectrum. This study is a heuristic at best. Kill epidemiology with a rusty pocket knife.
This is a legitimate concern. What we do is monitor the outdoor air quality, open the windows when it's good, close them when it's bad, and skip the air filters inside unless indoor air quality is measured to be bad. Which only happens during wildfires as our house is modern and pretty well sealed.
Once our children are past the age of 10 or so we will probably go back to running air filters all the time. But the early years are crucial for immune system development and lack of exposure to the natural environment in early years is likely to be one of the biggest reasons for the rise in allergic diseases.
If you get a particle meter you quickly learn that the biggest source of particulate isn't gas but cooking (and especially lightly burning) food. The slightest smell of smoke means your home is going to be like (insert terrible air quality city) for a few minutes to a few hours depending on filtration.
One of the worst sources of this is the fact that so few places have real vent fans above cooking surfaces (the sucking through the microwave business does essentially nothing).
Combustion products from gas stoves are specifically implicated in asthma. Children in houses with gas stoves have asthma at higher rates and the effect is not small. People with electric stoves cook too, but their children get less asthma.
Perhaps the higher heat has something to do with it. I still suspect that not all particulates are made equal, so even though burning food makes more PM2.5, perhaps the particulates from the gas combustion are worse for us in some way.
Still, I try to avoid any of it! I have an induction stove, but now do things like skin-on salmon in the air fryer because it produces basically no smoke, whereas it used to smoke my house out when I did it on the frypan. Requires a lot less supervision than to stop it burning in the pan too, which is nice (but perhaps I was always just doing it on too hot a pan)...
If your gas is burning yellow, it is producing soot. If it is burning blue, it is producing very little soot. (the yellow you see is actually hot particles of soot glowing, but at a much lower temperature than the gaseous fuel-air mixture which glows blue. Gas flames can just get pans quite a lot hotter than electric or induction, generally.
>Gas flames can just get pans quite a lot hotter than electric or induction, generally.
This claim doesn't really pass the smell test for me. My induction burner gets plenty hot really fast, much warmer than I could ever practically use while cooking, even. After a quick search I was not able to find any data supporting the claim either - the only data I was able to find seemed to support induction peaking out at significantly higher temperatures than gas.
Do you have any data on gas vs induction- max temperatures?
The gas flame is as big as your burner is, there is a lot of variation there that has to do with the physical characteristics of the burner and gas line pressure.
An induction burner will be limited to about 1.5 kW if it's a portable unit and maybe 2.5 kW on a built-in range.
A gas range will usually have a high rating of 15-20,000 BTU/h which works out to ~4.5-6 kW.
But thermal transfer efficiency is different, they both depend on the size of the pan, the material, shape, etc.
Stick a needle into a 3000F flame and it will be red hot in a second. A thin smallish pan can get super hot. You can't just have a "max temp" rating. However induction ranges will have some thermal protection for their insides.
If you spill something, the flames will also burn what you spilled.
I have both gas and induction. I don't think it makes sense to cook higher than 250C, because all oils will burn at that temp. And the induction works surprisingly well in this conditions, subjectively seems to be even better than gas (faster heating, better heat uniformity), did not expect that.
"Our meta-analyses suggest that children living in a home with gas cooking have a 42% increased risk of having current asthma, a 24% increased risk of lifetime asthma and an overall 32% increased risk of having current and lifetime asthma."
https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/42/6/1724/737113
The study has multiple parts. The part of the study I quoted is not specific to nitrogen dioxide, but a general conclusion about the combined effects of all of the properties of gas stoves. The study does not have enough information to conclude that the effect is entirely or even mostly caused by nitrogen dioxide in particular, or any other single cause. I did not claim that particulates are the cause. The point is that gas stove combustion products are harmful to children and probably everyone.
It depends... some microwaves are a) connected to an actual vent and b) have decent suction.
However, they cost a sizeable chunk more than the cheap shit you find in rentals. (In SV, that cheap shit is looking spiffy, but it's still cheap shit. If it says Frigidaire, you know it's not exactly high end)
This is my only dealbreaker in rentals. I will happily pay more for a unit with a real exhaust fan. Its crazy that we expect them in bathrooms but don’t expect them in kitchens. Health concerns aside, who wants their whole house to smell like fish for hours after cooking.
Yep - but it's a space question. (I live in a house from the '40s, I have no idea if people back then were somehow 30% smaller or something, but having a full hood and a microwave is just a fantasy given the available space. One day..)
People were slightly smaller in the '40s, but the main difference is that they had a lot less stuff. Compared to the purchasing power, furniture was more expensive and a vast majority of today's appliances did not exist at all.
A typical kitchen had a stove and either an old-fashioned icebox or a fridge, and that was it.
I noticed some toilets in older houses in the bay area were comically small for me at 6'2" and I as I rule couldn't see my face in mirrors standing up (they were mounted so the tops were about at shoulder level. People from different places around the world are also different sizes (a lot of this has to do with multi-generational semi-inherited nutrition availability)
> at what point does the over-sterilization of our environment (specifically with regard to microbes) do more harm than good?
This is a valid concern, here is a relevant peer-reviewed paper that models the impacts that interventions such as lock-downs, masking, and excessive sanitization may have in the context of the ongoing pandemic [1].
Quotes from [1]:
> Nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) have been employed to reduce the transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), yet these measures are already having similar effects on other directly transmitted, endemic diseases.
> we consider the implications of SARS-CoV-2 NPIs for two endemic infections circulating in the United States of America: respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and seasonal influenza
> Using laboratory surveillance data from 2020, we estimate that RSV transmission declined by at least 20% in the United States at the start of the NPI period.
> We simulate future trajectories of both RSV and influenza, using an epidemic model. As susceptibility increases over the NPI period, we find that substantial outbreaks of RSV may occur in future years, with peak outbreaks likely occurring in the winter of 2021–2022.
> Longer NPIs, in general, lead to larger future outbreaks although they may display complex interactions with baseline seasonality
The most important takeaway from this paper is that it will be critical to prepare for this phenomenon to prevent the over-utilization of healthcare facilities across the globe. Personally I don't see how anyone could argue for longer and more intense NPIs if we begin to see this play out.
I'd say: look at what they're allergic to and check in with anti-nutrients.
Sometimes ppl are not just allergic to gluten, but the whole category of lectin(which is in every seed), they just don't react as strongly, but they're never really healthy and suffer from all kinds of ailments.
the primary reason I disagree with this is because I didn't have allergies and I grew up with that theory, my immediate circle would criticize allergy prone people as being weak and coddled too hard, not allowed to be exposed to things
and then I travelled to another country with different kinds of pollen in the air and I wound up suffering from allergies there, how humiliating! so I thought, but really just humbling
looking up how to remedy it I found that one accepted train of thought now is that people are prone to develop allergies at any age, let alone being exposed to things different than where you grew up
so I would nip the over-sterilization argument right there. keep indoors clean, go outside.
Shouldn't your experience make you believe more in the over-sterilization argument?
When you traveled you got into contact with allergens that your body hadn't encountered before. If you had been in contact with those allergens when growing up then perhaps you wouldn't have had an allergic reaction?
>I found that one accepted train of thought now is that people are prone to develop allergies at any age
If you've never had soy before then how could you know whether you have a soy allergy or not?
I'm not trying to convince you either way. Just some holes in the argument.
I'm allergic to grass pollen myself. I have no idea how that squares with the argument, because I certainly never shied away from grass in the summer. But it's a fairly weak allergy.
You can develop allergies to things you had been exposed to early in your life. That's not a hole, if I didn't make that clear that's what I also meant, in addition to new allergens.
Put in other terms, your body can overreact any time for any reason causing inflammation.
From what I've understood on the subject is that it's not super-well understood yet, with the common advice early on having been to avoid exposure to common allergens for young children (because potential anaphylactic shock being a bad thing), until it was observed that children i Israel generally showing a lot lower rates of peanut allergies, and that very young children in Israel are exposed to peanut-containing snacks early on. At this point, the advice was reversed to that young children should be exposed to potential allergens early on (because developing a life-long allergy from under-exposure to an allergen is worse).
The rest I'm guessing is extrapolation from that - lack of early exposure = negative.
This is something that I've been told over and over - early exposure to things like dust, pollen, nuts etc basically eliminates allergies when older.
As an example, I was never exposed to cats early age but dogs yes. Now I have a mild reaction to cats hair and nothing with dogs. Of course this isn't a scientific study that can be validated but it does sort of make sense in my mind.
My wife was exposed to both from an early age and this continued until she was 15. Then she developed a mild allergy to dogs and a stronger allergy to cats (can't be in the same room with one).
I strangely had the same experience with hay fever. Never suffered from it then right around 15 it hit me pretty bad. I moved countries 5 years ago and again I no longer have hay fever symptoms so for sure they are not simple.
