On deliberately *not* poisoning oneself
Oct. 29th, 2021 07:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brin_bellway[cw: death, poison, illness, (fairly mild) drugs]
(part 1)
---
That evening, I came across a post about air quality, which was amusingly fitting.
---
The opening rhetorical question does seem a bit odd:
>>What do you worry about more: Getting exercise, eating vegetables, or the air you breathe?
My immediate response was to check the posting date, and it's...April of 2021, a time period when being worried about the air you breathe was extremely popular. The author even makes a crack at the end about "Who knows, maybe some unrelated reason to be interested in masks might come up". I guess they've got a point about people worrying about only *some* particulates (the semi-self-replicating ones) to the exclusion of worrying about, for example, rock dust.
---
Holy *crap* Americans do a lot of drugs. (I'm counting alcohol as a drug here, although it's still a lot even if you don't.)
---
The good news is that my humidifier happens to be an evaporative one. The bad news is that my brother recently bought himself one of the mist-jet kinds, and I strongly doubt he would react well to me sending him this post.
I *may* be able to talk to him about using distilled water for it, mentioning that I read a thing about air quality and it warned about mist-jet humidifiers aerosolising the minerals in water and then you're breathing bits of rocks into your lungs. Yeah, that could work.
---
My usual procedure for extinguishing candles is to blow them out using--and this is important--only *some* of the air in my lungs, then walk away, then exhale through my nose to clear it out. Only then do I breathe in. Using the lid sounds like it would be even better, though: I'll have to try that.
---
>>For the worst-offending train system, taking take a single trip from Newark, New Jersey to the World Trade Center in New York should cost 7.5 life minutes. Doing that as a commute five days per week would cost 0.56 DALYs.
So basically you should still wear a respirator on subways (*especially* NYC subways) even if you're immune to every disease in existence. Noted.
(I'm suspicious of the exact figures there, especially since--as the author readily admits--some particles are less dangerous than others and we don't actually have a clear sense of what tier(s) of badness the subway particles are, but OTOH it's not like I was ever *not* going to wear a respirator on a New York City subway.)
---
Their analysis of indoor vs outdoor air quality completely ignores the fact that home air-circulation systems (for heating and cooling) have a filter in them. Or at least mine does.
Also, it's viscerally obvious to anyone with pollen issues that indoor air contains vastly less pollen than outdoor air. During some parts of the year, I can stay inside for days and be totally fine, then get a sore throat when someone so much as opens an external door for a few seconds. I guess that falls under "closed windows should work for larger particles", yes, but I think the author is too quick to brush off the importance of larger particles.
---
We own a standalone air purifier, but it's in the basement because that's where the air quality is worst by far (I have to wear a mask if down there for extended periods, though it doesn't have to be taped shut) and Dad insists on spending almost all of his waking hours down there. I wonder if we should get another one for the living room.
(Even just having *one* around helps: Dad once brought it up and plugged it into a kitchen outlet during a large-quantities-of-smoke-producing cooking mishap.)
---
>>Vacuuming has been reported to cause particles to spike by 50.
Underestimates how dangerous vacuuming is. I have to wear a (non-taped) mask for vacuuming to avoid sore throats. (And wear acoustic earmuffs, but that's another matter.)
---
I have emailed Dad asking about the car's air filter, with a (not false) frame of being concerned about my ability to eat and drink in the car during pollen seasons. (I included a link to a guide on how to replace the air filter in our model of car (looks very easy), and an Amazon link to a HEPA filter compatible with said car model (costs about 30 CAD).)
(Update: between writing this draft and publishing it, he responded. He replaced the filter in August. It's not a HEPA. He thinks dealing with the reduced airflow of a HEPA filter by using a lower-grade filter most of the time and a HEPA on long trips probably wouldn't work because he noticed it took several days for the car's air quality to improve after the last filter replacement, but he does seem open to using a HEPA for the next annual filter change.)
---
Author: *talks about how many masks are low-quality and how hard it is to seal disposable N95s to your face properly*
Me: *muffled laughter from behind an elastomeric P100*
---
(edit: part 3)
(part 1)
---
That evening, I came across a post about air quality, which was amusingly fitting.
---
The opening rhetorical question does seem a bit odd:
>>What do you worry about more: Getting exercise, eating vegetables, or the air you breathe?
My immediate response was to check the posting date, and it's...April of 2021, a time period when being worried about the air you breathe was extremely popular. The author even makes a crack at the end about "Who knows, maybe some unrelated reason to be interested in masks might come up". I guess they've got a point about people worrying about only *some* particulates (the semi-self-replicating ones) to the exclusion of worrying about, for example, rock dust.
---
Holy *crap* Americans do a lot of drugs. (I'm counting alcohol as a drug here, although it's still a lot even if you don't.)
---
The good news is that my humidifier happens to be an evaporative one. The bad news is that my brother recently bought himself one of the mist-jet kinds, and I strongly doubt he would react well to me sending him this post.
I *may* be able to talk to him about using distilled water for it, mentioning that I read a thing about air quality and it warned about mist-jet humidifiers aerosolising the minerals in water and then you're breathing bits of rocks into your lungs. Yeah, that could work.
---
My usual procedure for extinguishing candles is to blow them out using--and this is important--only *some* of the air in my lungs, then walk away, then exhale through my nose to clear it out. Only then do I breathe in. Using the lid sounds like it would be even better, though: I'll have to try that.
---
>>For the worst-offending train system, taking take a single trip from Newark, New Jersey to the World Trade Center in New York should cost 7.5 life minutes. Doing that as a commute five days per week would cost 0.56 DALYs.
So basically you should still wear a respirator on subways (*especially* NYC subways) even if you're immune to every disease in existence. Noted.
(I'm suspicious of the exact figures there, especially since--as the author readily admits--some particles are less dangerous than others and we don't actually have a clear sense of what tier(s) of badness the subway particles are, but OTOH it's not like I was ever *not* going to wear a respirator on a New York City subway.)
---
Their analysis of indoor vs outdoor air quality completely ignores the fact that home air-circulation systems (for heating and cooling) have a filter in them. Or at least mine does.
Also, it's viscerally obvious to anyone with pollen issues that indoor air contains vastly less pollen than outdoor air. During some parts of the year, I can stay inside for days and be totally fine, then get a sore throat when someone so much as opens an external door for a few seconds. I guess that falls under "closed windows should work for larger particles", yes, but I think the author is too quick to brush off the importance of larger particles.
---
We own a standalone air purifier, but it's in the basement because that's where the air quality is worst by far (I have to wear a mask if down there for extended periods, though it doesn't have to be taped shut) and Dad insists on spending almost all of his waking hours down there. I wonder if we should get another one for the living room.
(Even just having *one* around helps: Dad once brought it up and plugged it into a kitchen outlet during a large-quantities-of-smoke-producing cooking mishap.)
---
>>Vacuuming has been reported to cause particles to spike by 50.
Underestimates how dangerous vacuuming is. I have to wear a (non-taped) mask for vacuuming to avoid sore throats. (And wear acoustic earmuffs, but that's another matter.)
---
I have emailed Dad asking about the car's air filter, with a (not false) frame of being concerned about my ability to eat and drink in the car during pollen seasons. (I included a link to a guide on how to replace the air filter in our model of car (looks very easy), and an Amazon link to a HEPA filter compatible with said car model (costs about 30 CAD).)
(Update: between writing this draft and publishing it, he responded. He replaced the filter in August. It's not a HEPA. He thinks dealing with the reduced airflow of a HEPA filter by using a lower-grade filter most of the time and a HEPA on long trips probably wouldn't work because he noticed it took several days for the car's air quality to improve after the last filter replacement, but he does seem open to using a HEPA for the next annual filter change.)
---
Author: *talks about how many masks are low-quality and how hard it is to seal disposable N95s to your face properly*
Me: *muffled laughter from behind an elastomeric P100*
---
(edit: part 3)
no subject
Date: 2021-10-30 07:47 am (UTC)(I'm trying to remember my geology maps... they didn't have as much detail north of the border. Glacial till, of course, but over what substrate? Indiana is primarily made of limestone under the glacial deposits, and all the things limestone is famous for relate to its dissolving easily in water.)
no subject
Date: 2021-10-30 04:28 pm (UTC)(The municipal government encourages people to soften only hot water, to reduce scale in your water heater while still [having increased calcium and magnesium and reduced sodium in your diet] and [reducing the amount of salt in wastewater]. I have no intention of doing this: there are plenty of ways to adjust my calcium/magnesium/sodium intake that do not involve me having to drink water that tastes like that, and our overall water consumption is less than half the four-person average (so we are contributing relatively little salt to the wastewater by simply *having* relatively little wastewater). I *am* potentially open to replacing the water softener with one that doesn't rely on salt, though I would want a taste test first.)
Even with softening, my humidifier wick definitely gets clogged over time. I replace it each year in late autumn (just did it last night, in fact), and sometimes I also soak the filter in water for a while partway through the year to dissolve some of the buildup and help get it through to autumn.
no subject
Date: 2021-11-18 02:29 am (UTC)Pollen
Date: 2021-11-23 08:48 pm (UTC)