[thecrims0nchin]

I have been monitoring my indoor house air for two years now, and attempting to keep my air as healthy as possible. I have found that:

1) If you are lucky enough to live in an area with clean air, opening a window is orders of magnitude quicker and more effective way to clean air.

2) Gas stoves are the worst thing you can do to your house air (a fume Hood can partially mitigate this)

3) You should be weary of using any cleaning product without ventilation (open windows for a whole day)

4) HEPA filters work, but slowly. Realize you can sneeze into these things and some % of your sneeze goes right through/around the filter. They need multiple passes to fully clean the air. Big quiet HEPA filters are the way to go.

5) Activated Carbon filters grab the stuff HEPA can't but they are very slow at it, and I haven't found anything commercial that works. The thin black layer on filters doesn't work, you need something more commercial like the ones people use when they are home growing weed. IMO, the effect of these is really hard to measure and I wouldn't personally suggest this right now.

6) Humidity control is important for health and has a relationship to air particulates

All of this work and basically I open windows any nice days, when I'm cleaning, and when I cook. Many HEPA filters and a beefy carbon filter cant compete with this. Even if it means running up the heat/AC bill a bit. I'm considering some sort of heat exchanger with filters in the future, but that is overkill. I am privileged to have nice air outside though and I realize this isn't THE solution for everyone.

As far as this article goes. HEPA filters are supposed to be replaced every 6 months, but even older filters get rid of so many particulates that we KNOW are bad for you it seems worth this tradeoff. Maybe a HEPA filter with a UV light could help (not by much probably), but be weary of "24 stage filters" and all that nonsense. HEPA is all most houses really need.

[hgomersall]

Have you compared gas stoves to electric stoves? With our induction hob we found cooking in general produces loads of pm10.

[QuercusMax]

Gas stoves are much worse, as they produce all kinds of combustion byproducts (CO2, etc.) when they're working properly. Here's a random article I found: https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/resources/documents/indoor-air-pollut...

Studies have pointed to increased asthma and other respiratory ailments from gas stoves. There's no possible way electric stoves can be anywhere near as bad as literally burning fossil fuels inside your house.

[thecrims0nchin]

That's really interesting! I switched from electric to gas (I regret not doing induction) and I found the pm10 and 2.5 are very similar for both. It is Co2 and No2 and vocs that surprise me about the gas stove. I'm no expert, just a lay person trying to make sense of it all but maybe the PM is from the food and therefore pretty consistent for all types of cooking?

[danans]

> I regret not doing convection

Did you mean induction? Convection just means "An oven with an internal fan to circulate hot air" (so actually not convection in the sense of a temperature difference driven air current).

Induction is using oscillating magnetic fields to heat a ferromagnetic cooking vessel.

> It is Co2 and No2 and vocs that surprise me about the gas stove.

Those are always the byproduct of low temperature open combustion of hydrocarbons, which is what a gas stove is doing.

> I'm no expert, just a lay person trying to make sense of it all but maybe the PM is from the food and therefore pretty consistent for all types of cooking?

I have an induction stove in a house whose baseline PM2.5, CO2, VOCs are very low (by design). I monitor PM2.5, C02 and VOCs during cooking, and the food itself definitely produces PM2.5, since that's the only measure that increases very much when I'm cooking (and only if I forget to turn on the stove extractor fan).

However, studies have shown that cooking on gas emits many times the amount of PM2.5 as electric. The difference is mostly in the energy delivery method, not the food cooked.

https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1172959

[thecrims0nchin]

>did you mean induction

I did! Thank you, don't know how convection ovens got in my head.

> gas emits many times the amount of PM2.5 as electric

You are right. Gas stoves are worse on all air quality metrics, and the actual food cooking is only a tiny source of PM.

In your experience is cooking on induction still the #1 poor air quality cause in your house?

[danans]

> In your experience is cooking on induction still the #1 poor air quality cause in your house?

Yes, but there isn't much competition anymore now that I've removed all combustion appliances, so only in the comparative sense. Nowadays the biggest air quality issues come from outdoors (pollen, smoke, NOx from nearby freeway).

[barefeg]

Off topic: how do you measure pm2.5 and pm10?

[thecrims0nchin]

I have three air monitors I got used. It's a really niche market so I get them cheap. I have a uhoo, laseregg, and airthings. None of them are super accurate and I bet I am measure a lot more than I want but I can see trends enough to make some good guesses.

[meco]

Can you give some reqs on what your monitoring system looks like?

I've been wanting to monitor our house's air quality for a while, but usually get put off looking at how poorly most affordable air quality monitors are reviewed.

Also, what metrics are most important? There's monitoring out there for pm2.5, pm10, HCHO, CO2, AQI, TVOC, etc, it's a bit of an alphabet soup.

[iancmceachern]

Iq air or purple has some nice stuff

[hinkley]

Life is better if you can dust and vacuum on days when you can open the windows. I don't think people understand how much dust the vacuum cleaner doesn't pick up, not because it goes through the filter, but because it gets kicked up by the brush and never enters the fan at all. If you don't believe me, try vacuuming a particularly dirty carpet while barefoot.

Exchanging the air before the dust settles out is a lot better than having to dust a second time.

We've forgotten the unreasonable power of soap in our rush to Better Living Through Chemistry. Someone did tests and showed that a lot of 'cleaned' countertops are gross because the bacteria just get smeared around and homogenized, and counterintuitively the kitchen of a college student may be safer than the kitchen of a 40-something.

When I really clean my counters (parental visits, or realizing entropy is winning), I avoid a lot of cleaning products by first using one of those pot scrapers, then a little liquid soap, a scrub brush, and water. Once I've mopped that up the counter is probably clean, but if I use a cleaning product, this is when I do it. Just enough to swipe over everything, not to lift food particles or dried drops of tomato sauce from last night's spaghetti.

The other forgotten hero is white vinegar. They've tested removing pathogens, heavy metals and car exhaust from garden vegetables (turns out soil contamination is a surface exposure issue more than an absorption issue, even for lead) and white vinegar tested equal to or better than the best vegetable washes - which is to say that none are perfect but some are downright lousy.

Also make sure your sponges aren't gross. Using a gross sponge to clean things makes everything gross. Dipping them in white vinegar and some kettle water is a good way to clean a slightly funky sponge (and burn your fingers - patience is a virtue). Store your sponges elevated, or as I do in one case, prop it up against the wall so one edge (edge not side) is touching the wall and one touching the ground. And don't get sunk cost fallacy with your sponges. Buy in bulk, and when in doubt, throw it out. There's a kind of sponge that comes compressed, a dozen to a pack, and it expands the first time you get it wet. You can throw the spares in your junk drawer and they will get lost.

With plentiful, clean sponges, I tend to use a damp sponge when entropy is winning on the dust front (when it's so dusty you can see the dust from halfway across the room) because otherwise most of that is just going into the air and landing again. A wrung out sponge works wonders, and with a light enough touch I can even use it on books and banker's boxes without leaving any water damage. I recommend practicing on boxes, because if you squeeze the sponge, you might get a water spot. Cleaning dusty bookshelves has gone from an ordeal to just another chore because of this.

[avalys]

What's the evidence that bacteria smeared around on an otherwise visibly "clean" kitchen counter, or dust kicked up from your carpet (which is largely human skin cells anyway) is actually harmful or "unsafe"?

A relative of mine is a 70 year old widower. He's a huge slob and after his wife died 10 years ago, he really doesn't bother to ever clean his house or his kitchen. It's not depression, he's just never been a particularly neat or clean person and simply doesn't care beyond an extremely minimal level. He is in great health and never gets sick, whether from food poisoning or anything else.

[feoren]

But doesn't that support GP's statement?

> counterintuitively the kitchen of a college student may be safer than the kitchen of a 40-something

[avalys]

Hah, a valid point, I guess I’m questioning what the absolute danger level is in both situations in the first place.

[hinkley]

Sorry, that's my fault. I said 'bacteria' but the studies were on food-borne pathogens on surfaces. So spreading, for instance, a little e-coli from the pork chop you cooked properly, killing everything, to the asparagus you steamed by touching the same surfaces after 'cleaning' them and not accomplishing your goal.

[thecrims0nchin]

I think their point isn't that you need to have your counter more than "visibly clean" but only that from the perspective of keeping your air healthy:

vinegar and a squeegee > water and sponge > spray cleaner

[heleninboodler]

> it gets kicked up by the brush and never enters the fan at all. If you don't believe me, try vacuuming a particularly dirty carpet while barefoot

Not having a particularly dirty carpet to vacuum handy, what happens? You feel the dirt pelting your feet?

[sul_tasto]

I’ve read that the rubbing alcohol is preferable to vinegar for disinfecting because vinegar can damage countertops.

[WastingMyTime89]

If you want to clean your kitchen countertop for food safety reason, you will never beat bleach. It’s cheap. It dries forming salt and water. It kills bacteria.

If you need an acidic product because you want to get ride of water stains, I have personally switched from white vinegar to citric acid. It’s cheap when bought in bulk as a powder. You can dilute it to the strength you want to. It takes less space to store and it doesn’t smell.