11 ms·
I’m in the midsts of this right now and it’s depressing. I spent yesterday morning with a sore throat and itchy eyes and most of the afternoon hopelessly drivin
by tyleo 6y ago
I’m in the midsts of this right now and it’s depressing. I spent yesterday morning with a sore throat and itchy eyes and most of the afternoon hopelessly driving hours away for a box fan and furnace filter (I finally found them). All the while I should have been working. Some of my coworkers have complained of week-long headaches. If anyone else is suffering from this: you are not alone.
- malwarebytess 6y agoI worry about the consequences of prolonged exposure. There is historical precedent that shows we should be concerned. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_London https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_London
- flyGuyOnTheSly 6y agoThat smog was mostly caused by coal and highly localized. Inhaling smoke is bad for your health, absolutely, but I fail to see many similarities between the two situations.
- xapata 6y agoCoal smoke in that case, not wood smoke. Coal is a terrible pollutant. If you survive the wood smoke, the literature suggests you'll be back to normal in a couple weeks.
- CydeWeys 6y agoSource? What makes combustion particulates from coal substantially worse than combustion particulates from wood?
- Verdex 6y agoCoal can have radioactive materials inside of it. There's radioactive carbon (c14) and it looks like also a bunch of more concerning materials. [] - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/#:~:text=At%20issue%20is%20coal's%20content,10%20times%20their%20original%20levels https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-....
- cyphar 6y agoRegarding carbon-14, there is so little of it that it makes no sense to even think about it (about 1 in 10^12 atoms). In addition, all biological matter (including you and the food you eat) has carbon-14 present in it -- that's the basic principle behind carbon dating. In fact, ash from wood burning would probably have more carbon-14 if anything. But yes, the article you linked talks about trace amounts of uranium and other materials that actually could be harmful.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- spqr0a1 6y agoThe half life of C-14 is much shorter than geologic formation time for coal. Coal's radioactivity is due to primordial nuclides and their decay chains.
- shard 6y agoHow does the radioactivity from coal compare with the radioactivity from bananas?
- tdy721 6y agoSulfur is a big one. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal Leading to, for example, acid rain. Also just a guess, coal is a finer particulate matter than wood, I think that might give more particles off. Wood dust, nope, coal dust? Hell no. Also radioactive!
- xapata 6y ago> Source? This one is easy to research. I'm not trying to convince you of anything, just being helpful.
- floor2 6y agoSpreading dangerous misinformation is not helpful, and you are trying to convince them of something- namely that this air pollution is no big deal. PM2.5 pollution, even at levels far lower than being seen now, is associated with literally hundreds of negative outcomes- lower IQ, worse test scores in standardized tests, more depression, worse ADHD, more asthma, more cancers (of both the lungs and other body parts), emphysema, as well as a whole host of issues related to full-body inflammation (ranging from auto-immune disorders to digestive problems).
- xapata 6y agoI didn't say, "No big deal." I am aware of the danger. Thus, "if you survive." The issues you're describing are studied after what I'd say is long term exposure. So far it's less than a week. A person with healthy lungs and no related problems will be back to normal if this ceases in a relatively short time. Of course, that doesn't mean we should relax about smoke season becoming a month-long annual event. They say dosage makes the poison, but duration is important, too.
- refurb 6y agoWood is made of complex carbohydrates (lignins). The worst thing you’ll get in the smoke is carbon particles and maybe a small amount of aromatic hydrocarbons like benzene. Coal is made of up of a mixture of aromatic hydrocarbons like a anthracene, naphthalene. These are already toxic to humans. Add metals like mercury, antimony, etc. Coal smoke is much worse than wood smoke.
- formerly_proven 6y agoToday in HackerNews: Don't worry about that pesky wood smoke, it'll all be fine, folks!
- xapata 6y agoNo, that's not the takeaway. I wear my N95 outside, run my air filter inside, and avoid strenuous activity. However, there's no need to panic if you get a cough from the smoke. Don't exaggerate my statement.
- Retric 6y agoWood smoke kills around 2 million people a year, though that generally takes long term exposure. So, while you’re not incorrect that individual wildfires are not a major concern, living in places where such exposure is common is a significant issue.
- DoofusOfDeath 6y agoI've never heard this number, but I find it really interesting. If you remember where you got this number, could you please share a link?
- njarboe 6y agoIt is probably because a billion? people still use open wood fires indoors with poor ventilation. Visualize a fire in the middle of a hut with a pot on it and a small hole in the ceiling. AQI in that hut is going to be very bad. Creating systems where people can afford to use propane or other gas stoves are a huge win for the health of humanity and ecosystems.
- formerly_proven 6y agoDie drei Plagen des Bauern: Hausrauch, ein undichtes Dach und eine untreue Frau > The three plagues of the farmer: household smoke, a leaky roof and an unfaithful wife Supposedly an old saying, but almost certainly retcon. Not necessarily wrong though, look at houses a few hundred years ago, that sort of thing is still ubiquitous in the developing and pre-developing world.
- Mc_Big_G 6y agoIt's not the wood I'm worried about, it's all the non-organic material in the smoke. Plastic, household chemicals, paint, etc... In some years we'll see a massive spike in cancer and respiratory issues from these fires.
- beefalo 6y agoI doubt there is a significant enough amount of those materials being burned. Millions of acres of forest has burned compared to relatively few buildings.
- laurencerowe 6y agoDoesn’t coal burn more cleanly than wood? Edit: I was probably thinking of smokeless coal which is processed to burn more cleanly.
- jcranmer 6y agoIt depends on the grade of coal. If you're burning anthracite, yes. If you're burning lignite... no.
- robocat 6y agoI would make the educated guess that the reason wood smoke is OK is because we have thousands of years of evolution to be more tolerant of wood smoke.
- anonAndOn 6y agoYou would hope, but no. Wood smoke is still deadly.[0] [0]https://www.stoveteam.org/why-stoves https://www.stoveteam.org/why-stoves
- robocat 6y ago“more tolerant” is what I said. Evolution is mostly a slow process and can never reach perfection. An evolutionary force that is too strong just kills a species.
- samatman 6y agoClose to a million years by the best guess. Which is thousands of years... about a thousand such thousands.
- anonAndOn 6y agoRightly so. Smoke inside the house is a leading cause of death. [0] [0]https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/household-air-pollution-and-health https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/household-a...
- BurningFrog 6y agoWould be interesting to know the AQI numbers for London back in the day. I can see how it may be too late for that...
- derwiki 6y agoI’ve been using an app that converts AQI to equivalent cigarettes smoked per day. It’s not perfect but it’s something I can wrap my head around as a meaningfully bad number.
- dls2016 6y agoWhat sort of numbers are you seeing?
- derwiki 6y agoYesterday it said 6 cigarettes in East Bay for AQI ~175
- tenkabuto 6y agoHere's one such app, for people that are interested: https://shootismoke.app https://shootismoke.app It's currently giving me 2.3 cigarettes per day, and I live a decent distance away from any of the fires (Sacramento, CA).
- cactus2093 6y agoWhy in the world would this be a native app and not a web page?
- toper-centage 6y agoData collection, of course.
- patothon 6y agoOr maybe the developer only knows mobile engineering? Not everything has to be seen from an uncharitable angle.
- heavyset_go 6y agoiOS encourages developers to make apps for their services because Safari's features and compatibility lag behind other browsers, and it doesn't implement PWA functionality.
- colmvp 6y agoThere's no good timing for these fires but now just seems really bad. Can't socialize inside because of Covid, can't socialize outdoors because of smoke. Tough time to be in the West Coast.
- sharkweek 6y agoAnd as someone in the PNW these last few weeks were going to be our last hurrah of nice warm weather before the long gray winter too.
- t-writescode 6y agoThat part, to me, is the least frustrating. I'm rather tired of having hot indoors because the PNW doesn't have air conditioning as standard in most of the apartments... It hasn't gone under 81 in my apartment since this whole smoke started; and my office tends to sit at 83 on the ground.
- y-c-o-m-b 6y ago> the PNW doesn't have air conditioning as standard in most of the apartments That's because it wasn't necessary until the last 10 years or so. 90 degree days were uncommon and night temps would dip low enough to cool most places in the evening through the next morning.
- grogenaut 6y agoIt's still not really. We had 2 days over 90 in seattle, one in the smoke. And a few days at 88-89, in total I had 4 days where I turned on the window unit in my home office. If I wasnt on a deep coding problem I'd be out in the yard. 4 days a year isn't really justification for aircon
- NegativeLatency 6y agoIf you live by a busy/noisy street as many apartments are, it's necessary. I grew up in the PNW in the suburbs and living more in the city in apartments the need for AC is much more real.
- x86_64Ubuntu 6y agoDo you mind giving your state? I'm on the east coast so I don't expect to have any problems like anyone in Idaho or on the West Coast.
- pc86 6y agoEven thought some smoke has reached the east coast for pretty much everything east of the Mississippi there is no change in air quality (yet?)
- brewdad 6y agoMost, if not all, of the smoke traveling that far will be up near the jet stream level of the atmosphere. It will impact your sunlight but will have little to no effect at ground level.
- quercusa 6y agoPhiladelphia-area highs came in about 7°F under forecast today due to the high smoke from the West Coast.
- jhardy54 6y agoI'm in Portland, Oregon and can report the same.
- sp332 6y agoLots of east coast pictures in this Twitter thread showing dimmed sun this morning: https://twitter.com/growingwisdom/status/1305821237587910657 https://twitter.com/growingwisdom/status/1305821237587910657
- gdubs 6y agoWillamette Valley here, and I feel you. Was really investing a lot of my optimism in the rain that was talked about for today, for over a week now — which doesn’t look like it’s gonna happen. This has been a long, long week.
- zwieback 6y agoWhen I stepped out of my house last night and saw clouds and a little bit of blue I was ridiculously happy. None of the predicted wind or rain has shown up so far, I wonder if the fires are blocking the normal wind from the ocean.
- evan_ 6y agoDark Sky has been promising a very good chance of light rain on Friday, it’s all that’s keeping me going... I’m trying to forget that it says 0.01”.
- mywittyname 6y agoDamn. That's like a glass of water being dumped on a driveway...
- davidw 6y agoHere in Bend it's pretty awful too. We live here because we love the outdoors, and we've been locked up inside since Friday. The kids are going stir crazy. Everyone was getting excited when the AQI dipped a bit under 200 yesterday (still rated "unhealthy") because we had been over 500. Now it's back up though, and they're talking about maybe things getting better by Thursday.
- briffle 6y agoAlso Willammette Valley. I was excited to look up this morning, and be able to both tell where the sun was, and see the outline of clouds through the smoke. Its been a week now. Still horrible outside, but definitely improved.
- runarberg 6y ago
- AnonsLadder 6y agoSame here in central Oregon, it's very bad and literally no viz. I almost can't see past my neighbor's house...
- rcMgD2BwE72F 6y agoI wonder how much all that cost, all in all, and how that compare to switching to non-carbon energy sources (to limit further climate damages)…
- pathseeker 6y agoNon-carbon energy sources will not stop fires. Many of the ecosystems in California have depended on the fires as part of their life-cycle. We screwed up over-preventing fires during the last 100 years and built up a huge tinder box.
- fossuser 6y agoWhy not order a few HEPA filter air purifiers? I have 4 (5th is on its way). They work extremely well and if you pair them with a Temptop AQI sensor you can see how well in real time: https://www.temtopus.com/collections/temtopus-pm2-5-pm10-monitor https://www.temtopus.com/collections/temtopus-pm2-5-pm10-mon... Those temptop sensors are great. I've previously had awair, foobot, and purple sensors which all sucked in different ways. Really long thread about this here: https://www.reddit.com/r/AirQuality/comments/ikf1ed/are_there_any_good_air_sensors/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AirQuality/comments/ikf1ed/are_ther...
- tyleo 6y agoI have some on the way but they won't arrive until the end of the week. I wanted relief yesterday so I drove around to get it.
- clairity 6y agowow, the temtop website sent my laptop fans spinning with all the crap it tries to load, and that my content blockers went into overdrive blocking (especially, and inexplicably, from reviewsimportify.com). still, i'm interested in getting a good pm2.5 monitor to pair with my air purifier, as air pollution is a much bigger issue than covid (air pollution certainly affects vast swaths of people across the world, persistently and largely invisibly, and is only getting worse over the decades). is waiting for the wifi version (currently sold out) worth nearly twice the (sale) price of an m10?
- fossuser 6y agoThe WiFi versions have negative value to me, the apps are usually terrible and they are almost impossible to pair (typically only have 2.4ghz radios). I went with the P10 which does exactly what I want (AQI and PM2.5). It looks nice, it works, and is highly visible from a distance (even has a 6hr battery which makes it easy to move between rooms). The only other one I'd consider is the one that does CO2. As a bonus the Temtop sensors are less than half the price of their competitors while being at least twice as good.
- truthwhisperer 6y agotake care
- originalbryan2 6y agoYeesh. I'm sorry. I'm in CO and even the levels here get me all of the symptoms you mentioned. Last week I drove 1700 miles and only escaped the smoke during a summertime snowfall. It rebounded and while driving I was suppressing a mild anxiety attack bc there's nothing you can do to escape it. Driving at sunrise/sunset reminds me of the original Mad Max. Expect real and depressing.