9 ms·

Permeable materials in homes act as sponges for harmful chemicals: study

112 points by XzetaU8 1y ago

2rsf 1y ago
The article doesn't seem to have immediate actionable recommendation, and is mainly a brick in a wall that can lead (or not) to better design decisions. One unclear point for example is what happens with the deposited toxins, how hard is it to clean them? are they transferred by touch?
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- hylaride 1y ago
  Well, it's a classic research paper. They're essentially only supposed to report findings. If you live in a house with central HVAC, a decent, regularly replaced filter will help a lot (make sure to only use full blown HEPPA filters if your furnace supports it otherwise you'll have all sorts of airflow issues). Otherwise you can buy air purifiers. The study measured smoke (cigarette and wildfire) as well as insecticides, so minimizing exposure to both is probably the easiest first step (not smoking inside is easy, but wildfire depends on how porous your house is).
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - amluto 1y ago
    The study is about VOCs. You’ll want a carbon filter, as even a HEPA filter won’t do much. Also, don’t put a HEPA filler in your HVAC return — not only is it unhelpful overkill, it will have excessive static pressure drop, thus wasting power, increasing noise, reducing airflow, and potentially damaging the blower. Use an appropriate filter in the MERV 13-16 range.
    - imp0cat 1y ago
      Carbon filters in air purifiers are a pain. They do work, but due to their smaller volumes they tend to get full quite fast and require frequent replacements. If you're considering one, make sure to get an air purifies where the carbon filter can be changed independently from the main filter.
crazygringo 1y ago
The more we study it, the more we learn how harmful the air inside our homes is. That's why fresh air is key. Crack a window or two open. Buy an air monitor that monitors CO2 (good proxy for overall freshness), VOCs (sometimes these build up much faster than CO2), and PM2.5. If CO2 or VOCs are high, open windows more. If PM2.5 is high and coming from outdoors, turn on an air filter. Yes, this means your heating and cooling bill will be a bit higher. But for your health and concentration, it's worth it.
- fnordian_slip 1y ago
  I bought an aranet 4, it's quite eye opening how you sometimes get a lot of CO2 buildup without even noticing. I mostly solve any issues with VOC by "Stosslueften", but if that's not enough because the air quality outside is too bad, a CR box is an effective, easy to build and almost perfectly silent design, especially if you do it with decent quality pc fans.
  - agwa 1y ago
    A CR box only removes particulates, not VOCs. To remove VOCs, you need a filter with many pounds of activated carbon.
    - fnordian_slip 1y ago
      Ah, my bad, I thought that everyone built CR boxes with carbon, but that's not the case. The standard design doesn't use carbon at all. Thanks for the correction.
- Etheryte 1y ago
  This is advice that gets thrown around a lot, but it's missing the important bit of how to buy a meter that's both reasonably accurate and affordable. There are countless articles online showing how widely commonly sold meters vary in their readings. What's more, paying more often does not mean you'll get a more accurate reading. Sure, there's diminish returns and past a certain point it doesn't matter, but many meters are completely unreliable.
amelius 1y ago
Sounds like good news. The sponges take harmful chemicals out of our environment.
- crazygringo 1y ago
  ...to then re-release them gradually over the next days and months. So, no.
  - amelius 1y ago
    Then you need a better sponge.
    - SketchySeaBeast 1y ago
      Yes, they are bad sponges, that's the issue, both that they are sponges and that they are bad at it.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- npteljes 1y ago
  Not good news, it's just better to know, than to not know. These sponges don't take chemicals out of our environment, they trap it and slowly release it where we would need cleanness. These chemicals would have gone away a long time ago, but the sponges kept them there. Additionally why this is not good news, these materials were not supposed to be sponges to begin with. So, it's like discovering a bad side effect. Again, better to know than to not know, but it's not what one would call good news.
mitjam 1y ago
We have a basement garage in our house which has probably not seen a car since the 80s. It still smells of gasoline.
- driverdan 1y ago
  Concrete absorbs petroleum spills. You may need to identify areas that are stained and do a thorough cleaning to try to extract as much as possible.
  - mitjam 1y ago
    Yeah, also: The walls are covered with vapor-permeable lime plaster. the idea is to let a contractor specialized in this knock it all off. I have heard that there‘s probably lead in there from leaded gasoline, could be bad for health.
- sidewndr46 1y ago
  How do you have a basement garage? I've seen some weird arrangements, but did the driveway have some massive slope or something?
bryangrigorie 1y ago
Not really good news for my OCD.
meindnoch 1y ago
I wonder what the air quality inside a submarine is like, after spending 60 days submerged. How does it smell?
- yabones 1y ago
  I've toured a '60s era Cold War diesel-electric sub that's been a museum for ~20 years, and it still absolutely reeked of diesel. Combine that with the smell of a couple dozen dudes that haven't showered properly in weeks, and your answer would be not good. The long-term health outcomes are probably significantly worse for people that served in diesel subs than nuclear because of the constant exposure to fossil fuel volatiles. Just being in there for a 20 minute tour made me feel like I just smoked 20 cigarettes.
  - sidewndr46 1y ago
    Nuclear subs have diesel engines too, so I'm not sure what makes you think it wouldn't be as bad on a nuclear sub.
VagabundoP 1y ago
Brings back memories of how much the old people I know would open every door and window to let in "fresh air". Sometimes old heads...
mschuster91 1y ago
> The findings suggest that regular ventilation alone may be insufficient to remove many indoor contaminants. Physical cleaning activities such as vacuuming, mopping and dusting are necessary to effectively remove compounds with high partition coefficients from surface reservoirs. Yup. Indoor smoker homes are the worst because cleaning alone is often not enough. Cheap landlords just slap a coat of paint on to hide the visible stain, better landlords use nicotine blocker paint that's pretty expensive... but that's only good for moderate smoke. Decent ones run a few ozone generators for a few weeks while no one and no thing is inside, with the added danger that the decomposition products are toxic on their own and the ozone might damage the electrical wiring. The only actually reasonably safe way to deal with a heavily smoke laden home is to rip out everything where the smoke has seeped into. For the Americans here, that may mean a complete teardown as the cardboard, insulation and even framing wood will be soaked in smoke residue; Europeans have it a bit better because for us, it's usually enough to remove the plaster but leave the brick/concrete walls alone. Homes that have been affected by fire are often written off for the same reason, even if the fire itself didn't blaze in the home (say, a lower apartment burned off). The smoke seeps everywhere, especially in older buildings where doors aren't airtight or you got bathroom/kitchen exhaust vents without backflow prevention, and fire smoke is orders of magnitude worse in its effect than cigarette smoke - cigarettes are at least plant based materials, household fire smoke is riddled with stuff like dioxine (from plastics) and other highly toxic combustion products.
- musha68k 1y ago
  This is also one of the saddest aspects of retro computing. Most listings fail to mention whether previous owners were smokers, and most sellers either aren't sensitive to and/or haven't experienced the off-gassing that occurs once devices warm up through actual use. So this is actually the main reason I'm thrilled about the MiSTer project and the growing number and variety of FPGA-based clones being released today.
  - mschuster91 1y ago
    And some things like arcade machines, you often can't even get them in "no smoker" conditions as they've been installed in arcades, pubs and other venues where a lot of the attendees smoke.
musha68k 1y ago
I'm asking myself if building a DIY setup or buying something like Airthings Wave Plus will actually track these compounds at decent accuracy - and if anyone here has gone down this rabbit hole for family health? From what I've gathered, consumer devices hit acceptable accuracy for CO2/temp/humidity but PM2.5 is hit-or-miss, and VOC readings are more "relative change indicators" than absolute values.. DIY with Home Assistant is more work/fun yes but again only gets similar accuracy AFAIK (with potentially better automation)..
- tylerflick 1y ago
  You can (within reason) calibrate these cheap CO2 easily with esphome and an outdoor air reference point overtime. I’ve had to do it for thermometers as well.
dpc_01234 1y ago
Isn't this obvious? I don't know, maybe there are some details of this study that are are scientifically useful, but as a news it's pointless? Yeah, make sure to get a lot of ventilation, but that doesn't require any study. Even without any any pollutants, indoor air will have a bad quality. And your body deals with minor amount of bad stuff just fine.
- andyp-kw 1y ago
  I think that the crowd on HN tend to enjoy learning, and thus wouldn’t find it pointless to read.
rmah 1y ago
newsflash: permeable materials are permeable
clem 1y ago
Having moved into a home previously owned by a chain smoker ten years prior, I have no problem believing this. We've had to run ozonators in rooms repeatedly to finally get the smell out.
hxorr 1y ago
This is why your plastic ketchup bottle still smells like ketchup after washing it multiple times - at a microscopic level, plastics essentially look like uncooked ramen/instant noodles, basically a big tangle of polymer chains which act like a sponge. Now, consider what happens when you wash that plastic with a cocktail of chemicals in your dishwasher... Obviously very hard/dense plastics (melamine comes to mind) are less prone to this
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]

112 points by XzetaU8 1y ago

2rsf 1y ago

The article doesn't seem to have immediate actionable recommendation, and is mainly a brick in a wall that can lead (or not) to better design decisions. One unclear point for example is what happens with the deposited toxins, how hard is it to clean them? are they transferred by touch?

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
hylaride 1y ago
Well, it's a classic research paper. They're essentially only supposed to report findings. If you live in a house with central HVAC, a decent, regularly replaced filter will help a lot (make sure to only use full blown HEPPA filters if your furnace supports it otherwise you'll have all sorts of airflow issues). Otherwise you can buy air purifiers. The study measured smoke (cigarette and wildfire) as well as insecticides, so minimizing exposure to both is probably the easiest first step (not smoking inside is easy, but wildfire depends on how porous your house is).
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- amluto 1y ago
  The study is about VOCs. You’ll want a carbon filter, as even a HEPA filter won’t do much. Also, don’t put a HEPA filler in your HVAC return — not only is it unhelpful overkill, it will have excessive static pressure drop, thus wasting power, increasing noise, reducing airflow, and potentially damaging the blower. Use an appropriate filter in the MERV 13-16 range.
  - imp0cat 1y ago
    Carbon filters in air purifiers are a pain. They do work, but due to their smaller volumes they tend to get full quite fast and require frequent replacements. If you're considering one, make sure to get an air purifies where the carbon filter can be changed independently from the main filter.

crazygringo 1y ago

The more we study it, the more we learn how harmful the air inside our homes is. That's why fresh air is key. Crack a window or two open. Buy an air monitor that monitors CO2 (good proxy for overall freshness), VOCs (sometimes these build up much faster than CO2), and PM2.5. If CO2 or VOCs are high, open windows more. If PM2.5 is high and coming from outdoors, turn on an air filter. Yes, this means your heating and cooling bill will be a bit higher. But for your health and concentration, it's worth it.

fnordian_slip 1y ago
I bought an aranet 4, it's quite eye opening how you sometimes get a lot of CO2 buildup without even noticing. I mostly solve any issues with VOC by "Stosslueften", but if that's not enough because the air quality outside is too bad, a CR box is an effective, easy to build and almost perfectly silent design, especially if you do it with decent quality pc fans.
- agwa 1y ago
  A CR box only removes particulates, not VOCs. To remove VOCs, you need a filter with many pounds of activated carbon.
  - fnordian_slip 1y ago
    Ah, my bad, I thought that everyone built CR boxes with carbon, but that's not the case. The standard design doesn't use carbon at all. Thanks for the correction.
Etheryte 1y ago
This is advice that gets thrown around a lot, but it's missing the important bit of how to buy a meter that's both reasonably accurate and affordable. There are countless articles online showing how widely commonly sold meters vary in their readings. What's more, paying more often does not mean you'll get a more accurate reading. Sure, there's diminish returns and past a certain point it doesn't matter, but many meters are completely unreliable.

amelius 1y ago

Sounds like good news. The sponges take harmful chemicals out of our environment.

crazygringo 1y ago
...to then re-release them gradually over the next days and months. So, no.
- amelius 1y ago
  Then you need a better sponge.
  - SketchySeaBeast 1y ago
    Yes, they are bad sponges, that's the issue, both that they are sponges and that they are bad at it.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
npteljes 1y ago
Not good news, it's just better to know, than to not know. These sponges don't take chemicals out of our environment, they trap it and slowly release it where we would need cleanness. These chemicals would have gone away a long time ago, but the sponges kept them there. Additionally why this is not good news, these materials were not supposed to be sponges to begin with. So, it's like discovering a bad side effect. Again, better to know than to not know, but it's not what one would call good news.

mitjam 1y ago

We have a basement garage in our house which has probably not seen a car since the 80s. It still smells of gasoline.

driverdan 1y ago
Concrete absorbs petroleum spills. You may need to identify areas that are stained and do a thorough cleaning to try to extract as much as possible.
- mitjam 1y ago
  Yeah, also: The walls are covered with vapor-permeable lime plaster. the idea is to let a contractor specialized in this knock it all off. I have heard that there‘s probably lead in there from leaded gasoline, could be bad for health.
sidewndr46 1y ago
How do you have a basement garage? I've seen some weird arrangements, but did the driveway have some massive slope or something?

bryangrigorie 1y ago

Not really good news for my OCD.

meindnoch 1y ago

I wonder what the air quality inside a submarine is like, after spending 60 days submerged. How does it smell?

yabones 1y ago
I've toured a '60s era Cold War diesel-electric sub that's been a museum for ~20 years, and it still absolutely reeked of diesel. Combine that with the smell of a couple dozen dudes that haven't showered properly in weeks, and your answer would be not good. The long-term health outcomes are probably significantly worse for people that served in diesel subs than nuclear because of the constant exposure to fossil fuel volatiles. Just being in there for a 20 minute tour made me feel like I just smoked 20 cigarettes.
- sidewndr46 1y ago
  Nuclear subs have diesel engines too, so I'm not sure what makes you think it wouldn't be as bad on a nuclear sub.

VagabundoP 1y ago

Brings back memories of how much the old people I know would open every door and window to let in "fresh air". Sometimes old heads...

mschuster91 1y ago

> The findings suggest that regular ventilation alone may be insufficient to remove many indoor contaminants. Physical cleaning activities such as vacuuming, mopping and dusting are necessary to effectively remove compounds with high partition coefficients from surface reservoirs. Yup. Indoor smoker homes are the worst because cleaning alone is often not enough. Cheap landlords just slap a coat of paint on to hide the visible stain, better landlords use nicotine blocker paint that's pretty expensive... but that's only good for moderate smoke. Decent ones run a few ozone generators for a few weeks while no one and no thing is inside, with the added danger that the decomposition products are toxic on their own and the ozone might damage the electrical wiring. The only actually reasonably safe way to deal with a heavily smoke laden home is to rip out everything where the smoke has seeped into. For the Americans here, that may mean a complete teardown as the cardboard, insulation and even framing wood will be soaked in smoke residue; Europeans have it a bit better because for us, it's usually enough to remove the plaster but leave the brick/concrete walls alone. Homes that have been affected by fire are often written off for the same reason, even if the fire itself didn't blaze in the home (say, a lower apartment burned off). The smoke seeps everywhere, especially in older buildings where doors aren't airtight or you got bathroom/kitchen exhaust vents without backflow prevention, and fire smoke is orders of magnitude worse in its effect than cigarette smoke - cigarettes are at least plant based materials, household fire smoke is riddled with stuff like dioxine (from plastics) and other highly toxic combustion products.

musha68k 1y ago
This is also one of the saddest aspects of retro computing. Most listings fail to mention whether previous owners were smokers, and most sellers either aren't sensitive to and/or haven't experienced the off-gassing that occurs once devices warm up through actual use. So this is actually the main reason I'm thrilled about the MiSTer project and the growing number and variety of FPGA-based clones being released today.
- mschuster91 1y ago
  And some things like arcade machines, you often can't even get them in "no smoker" conditions as they've been installed in arcades, pubs and other venues where a lot of the attendees smoke.

musha68k 1y ago

I'm asking myself if building a DIY setup or buying something like Airthings Wave Plus will actually track these compounds at decent accuracy - and if anyone here has gone down this rabbit hole for family health? From what I've gathered, consumer devices hit acceptable accuracy for CO2/temp/humidity but PM2.5 is hit-or-miss, and VOC readings are more "relative change indicators" than absolute values.. DIY with Home Assistant is more work/fun yes but again only gets similar accuracy AFAIK (with potentially better automation)..

tylerflick 1y ago
You can (within reason) calibrate these cheap CO2 easily with esphome and an outdoor air reference point overtime. I’ve had to do it for thermometers as well.

dpc_01234 1y ago

Isn't this obvious? I don't know, maybe there are some details of this study that are are scientifically useful, but as a news it's pointless? Yeah, make sure to get a lot of ventilation, but that doesn't require any study. Even without any any pollutants, indoor air will have a bad quality. And your body deals with minor amount of bad stuff just fine.

andyp-kw 1y ago
I think that the crowd on HN tend to enjoy learning, and thus wouldn’t find it pointless to read.

rmah 1y ago

newsflash: permeable materials are permeable

clem 1y ago

Having moved into a home previously owned by a chain smoker ten years prior, I have no problem believing this. We've had to run ozonators in rooms repeatedly to finally get the smell out.

hxorr 1y ago

This is why your plastic ketchup bottle still smells like ketchup after washing it multiple times - at a microscopic level, plastics essentially look like uncooked ramen/instant noodles, basically a big tangle of polymer chains which act like a sponge. Now, consider what happens when you wash that plastic with a cocktail of chemicals in your dishwasher... Obviously very hard/dense plastics (melamine comes to mind) are less prone to this

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]