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Extinguish candles with a lid. If you are worrying about the method by which you extinguish a candle, worrying is what's going to shorten your life, not the ca
by WillPostForFood 6y ago
Extinguish candles with a lid.
If you are worrying about the method by which you extinguish a candle, worrying is what's going to shorten your life, not the candle.
- drivebycomment 6y agoThank you. That is such a great one liner that I wrote this down in my quote collection.
- tda 6y agoI have a cheap pm10 meter and ran it continuously for a few weeks. Next too cooking meat the other activity that stood out was blowing out the birthday candles. The pm10 rose to 300 and only was backs to healthy levels (below 50) several hours later. I was as surprised as you are. Next time I'll definitely open a window
- coddle-hark 6y agoHow often do you blow out birthday candles?
- vinw 6y agoAt least once a year
- kenniskrag 6y agoYou're lucky not born on 29th February.
- uCantCauseUCant 6y agoEvery day when you are poor on this planet..
- HPsquared 6y agoNot all particles are equally toxic. If I had to guess, the smoke from a recently-extinguished candle is probably condensed wax vapor rather than PAHs and heavy metals.
- Symmetry 6y agoI don't think condensed wax vapor has looks like the dark smoke that comes off a recently extinguished candle. I'm pretty sure it's carbon compounds from the wick.
- yarcob 6y agoThe black smoke is soot from partially burned wax and it's definitely carcinogenic.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- sizzle 6y agoCondensed wax vapor can’t be good for your lungs when inhaled
- sputr 6y agoWhere did you get a cheap meter and what do you consider cheap :D?
- tda 6y agoIt's a pms5003 which I bought for €12 from aliexpress
- twiddling 6y agocheck out fireworks for the Fourth: https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2020/06/a-big-fireworks-pollution-question-will.html https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2020/06/a-big-fireworks-pollu...
- tda 6y agoThe absolute values measured are not that high luckily. In the Netherlands at New years pm10 of greater than 1000 can be observed. I believe my outdoor sensor peaked at 900 in the first minutes of 2020. Glad fireworks were banned this year
- echelon 6y agoI wonder if people thought the same about radioactive substances? There's a large body of emerging science that points to inhaled particulates reducing health and lifespan.
- tolmasky 6y agoI don’t think it’s generating anxiety, just creating a habit. Like washing your hands with soap after you go to the bathroom. Once upon a time that sentence might generate the response “if you’re worrying about how you wash your hands, then the worrying is what’s going to kill you!” (in actuality it was worse, the suggestion that a surgeon should wash his hands before surgery was considered offensive). But today it’s pretty automatic, not some laborious mental checklist. And if you’re in a situation without soap, generally you don’t freak out, you do your best with just water and move on.
- Out_of_Characte 6y agoAnyone whose health can be reasonably influenced by how you put out a candle has not been born yet. Everyone else has to deal with jobs and living circumstances that requires one to be inside all day, work strange hours, be outside in the sun all day, inhale fine dust from any kind of road nearby. There is a near endless list of similar/worse risk factors at play in one's life. Even though these risks might be provable in their damage to your functioning and there might be reasonable solutions to them, implementing them will still be insignificant. Just like how you should avoid apples because at least apples have killed people.
- hannob 6y agoMy first thought on the candles was: If you're worried about paritculate emissions and air quality in your flat then maybe just don't burn anything in your flat. I haven't researched that, but it always seemed entirely obvious to me that candles aren't exactly healthy in terms of air quality.
- HPsquared 6y agoOne big thing is natural gas combustion producing nitrogen oxides. Gas burners used for cooking make a LOT of it, right inside the home.
- billfruit 6y agoThat is also one of the arguments for choosing induction over gas, since it removes combustion from the kitchen.
- parsimo2010 6y agoI think my follow on question would be which is better- a scented candle or a scented plug in like an Air Wick or Glade? Or are they similar and the only good choice is to have no perfumes floating in the air? I’ll gladly switch systems if there is a difference but I’d like to have something to make my house smell better.
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoDepends on your risk tolerance. Candle emissions have a low but known impact on your health. Plug in air fresheners don't have a known impact but they have god knows what chemicals in them. Maybe you'll get cancer at 60, maybe it would take three lifetimes of exposure to have any effect.
- Loughla 6y agoI genuinely can't be convinced there are people alive today that the risk of one scented candle in the home and/or plug in air fresheners are higher than the background danger of auto, industry, and just general pollution. This seems like an anxiety in search of a problem, or am I very underestimating it? It just seems like the road in front of my house is probably more of a problem than my vanilla candle.