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I spent this Last summer at the cabin in Maine, I went on to review WIRED’s gear air purifiers, food dehydratorsand: indoor air quality monitors. I monitored the outdoor air quality, monitored the indoor air, and watched the numbers climb in their predictable pattern as I used the furnace.
After a few weeks of my cabin air quality testing, I noticed strange spikes in PM 2.5 for no apparent reason. such as heart attacks, hypertension, and respiratory problems, to name a few. I had not done anything. The PM 2.5 numbers on the various air quality monitors have gone from 4 to 24 to 75 or higher.The internal sensors on my air cleaners, some use the same technology as my air quality monitors; a small chamber where a beam of light disperses particles, even invisible PM 2.5, automatically turns on their fans. And I just walked across the room.
It was the carpet.
For the first time I heard about the dangers of household rugs and carpets air pollution researcher Shelley Miller At the University of Colorado at Boulder, who I interviewed for mine the first story on air quality; namely, how to get good air in my 100-year-old Brooklyn apartment.It was Miller who introduced me to the term resuspension. Resuspension is exactly what it sounds like. carpet dust and particles fly up. Same thing happens with upholstery. I have an air quality monitor next to my bed and I’ve seen a rise in PM 2.5. moving over my quilt We dust, vacuum and wash fabrics not just for aesthetics; it’s also for our health, and more importantly, our hearts.
Photo by Lisa Wood Shapiro
It’s in the Cloud
I’d forgotten about the reins and let my no-shoes rule slide by the hall.I’d pulled out both rugs for the old fashioned sweep. Giant columns of dust flew into the air. I brought my six year old Dyson stick vacuum with HEPA filter with me, but in the end I rolled up my rugs, put them away and decided to sweep and mop the wood floors instead.My indoor air quality has improved.
I contacted the indoor air quality researcher Andrea Ferro from Clarkson University and asked him how to clean the air of the scourge that is carpet dust, he pointed out that HEPA air filters did the trick; “We get dust all the time. It’s a normal component of indoor air,” he told me. And it’s not just about being neat, there are health benefits—cardioprotective benefits—that come with good air.
When I first told Jonathan Newman, director of clinical research at NYU Langone Health’s Center for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention, about my bad indoor air, he noted: study he worked in public housing in New York to quantify the health benefits of good air. And indoor PM 2.5, suspended or otherwise, is something that HEPA filters can clean. Dr. Newman noted that air purifiers “ appear to reduce blood pressure by approximately 3-4 mm Hg at different time intervals.’ And while lowering blood pressure by three points may seem like a small number, Dr. Newman suggested looking at it in terms of how we improve our health through diet. Lower one’s indoor PM 2.5 is also about what we see in sodium and blood pressure with dietary approaches to reduce it.”
