AIR QUALITY

One fixation of mine is that air quality has some profound effects, much larger than most people seem to realize. It’s the same order of magnitude as eating well or getting exercise, but it’s much easier than those things to address.

I find it baffling that so many people who are interested in health and longevity will go down rabbit holes with obscure supplements and lifestyle tricks before fixing their air. I mean, sure, those things might have some benefit, but fixing your air definitely does, and we know exactly how to do it, and it’s pretty easy.

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All posts on air quality

What if you just bought everyone air purifiers?

amazing or nah

I haven’t written about air quality in a while. Ominously, sometimes people ask me if I still care about it. So, lest anyone think I have some kind of dreadful healthy mental balance, I thought I should do some Fermi...

Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

The Wirecutter's review of the IKEA air purifier is a mishmash of scientific errors, shoddy testing, and self-contradictory logic.

IKEA has recently made some moves into the air purifier space. The Wirecutter is not impressed. They allow that this purifier is inexpensive and pretty. But still, it's terrible and you should instead buy a different purifier that totally coincidentally...

A summary of the research on gas stoves and health

How much nitrogen dioxide do stoves make and how much does it hurt you?

Many recent articles have raised the idea that gas stoves are harmful to health:

The case against ultrasonic humidifiers

Why it's better not to use an ultrasonic humidifier

Let me state two things upfront: It is possible to use ultrasonic humidifiers safely. Regardless of how they’re used, we don’t know for sure that ultrasonic humidifiers are dangerous. Absolutely true! However, as typically used, ultrasonic humidifiers might cause health...

Better air quality is the easiest way not to die

Why the air you breathe matters, and what to do about it.

What do you worry about more: Getting exercise, eating vegetables, or the air you breathe? While most things that clearly improve health are well known, one is insanely underrated: Fixing your air. I suspect this is often the most effective...

The Cuboid: A DIY air purifier that's better than a box-fan

Designs for a quieter, more energy efficient purifier, and data proving it really works.

I love box-fan based air purifiers. They are cheap, trivial to build, and people around the world have done experiments to show they actually work.

Experiments on a $50 DIY air purifier you can make in 30s

You can make a DIY air purifier in 30s. To test if it works, I generated smoke, and measured how well it removes tiny particles.

Bad air is bad for you. The air purifier market, though, is a mess. Every purifier uses incompatible proprietary filters, presumably to lock you into buying replacements. How do we know these actually work? Few seem to publish lab tests....