Thanks Ramiro, I hadn’t listened to that 80kh interview-so I’ll do that! But yes it could fall into both ‘Global health and well being’, but also longtermism categories (bio-risk mitigation-wise).
Also, sorry if this is stupid, but it seems that, unlike CO2, risks from many pollutants (like particulate matters and pathogens) could be significantly mitigated by effective dispersion; so even a normal ventilator could have observable effect on indoor air quality, right? Thus, I wonder if there are / could be any relevant policy recommendations along this line—like for urban design, e.g., “locate potential air pollution emissions by the sea, or spread through areas where they can be dispersed by winds”. Does it make any sense?
Yes you’re right. I guess there’s a difference between ventilation (dispersing the air around, either ‘natural’ - e.g. windows, or ‘mechanical’ e.g fans would also do the job) and purification (sucking the air through a filter to scrub out the pollutants/pathogens). I think both go some way to help this problem and just alone ventilation alone is more cost effective (table 1), however ventilation alone may not work in some instances. For instance, if the outside air is poor-quality (dense urban areas/near intense farming), or where there access to outside air is limited (high rise flats/offices where the windows don’t open), or for poorly-insulated buildings which are difficult to heat, so fresh air may be limited, it’s also hard to judge how much air needs to be replaced, which is where the CO2 and other monitors come in use.
Regarding the urban design idea, I’m not quite sure how effective this could be, a lot of the sources of air pollution are lots of individual sources, things like vehicle emissions, home heating, agriculture, which would make it hard to disperse by design, but it maybe more feasible with industry. But perhaps policy suggestions that control how much PM2.5/NO2 is emitted by industry might be warranted, which they could control by adding scrubbers/ filters to the outgoing air, if successful that might be applied to the smaller individual scale too. Thanks for these thoughts!
Thanks Ramiro, I hadn’t listened to that 80kh interview-so I’ll do that! But yes it could fall into both ‘Global health and well being’, but also longtermism categories (bio-risk mitigation-wise).
Yes you’re right. I guess there’s a difference between ventilation (dispersing the air around, either ‘natural’ - e.g. windows, or ‘mechanical’ e.g fans would also do the job) and purification (sucking the air through a filter to scrub out the pollutants/pathogens). I think both go some way to help this problem and just alone ventilation alone is more cost effective (table 1), however ventilation alone may not work in some instances. For instance, if the outside air is poor-quality (dense urban areas/near intense farming), or where there access to outside air is limited (high rise flats/offices where the windows don’t open), or for poorly-insulated buildings which are difficult to heat, so fresh air may be limited, it’s also hard to judge how much air needs to be replaced, which is where the CO2 and other monitors come in use.
Regarding the urban design idea, I’m not quite sure how effective this could be, a lot of the sources of air pollution are lots of individual sources, things like vehicle emissions, home heating, agriculture, which would make it hard to disperse by design, but it maybe more feasible with industry. But perhaps policy suggestions that control how much PM2.5/NO2 is emitted by industry might be warranted, which they could control by adding scrubbers/ filters to the outgoing air, if successful that might be applied to the smaller individual scale too. Thanks for these thoughts!