Category: air

Candles and Incense sources of Indoor Air Pollution

Sotirios Papathanasiou5 Comments

Candles and Incense sources of Indoor Air Pollution

They look nice and they smell even better, but unfortunately most of them are made of toxic ingredients and when you light them, they diffuse all these toxic ingredients inside your house.

Harmful VOCs

Most commercial candles are full of toxic ingredients that many times they don’t even write on the package like Paraffin, Acetone, Trichlorofluoromethane, Carbon Disulfide, 2-Butanone, Trichloroethane, Trichloroethene, Carbon Tetrachloride, Tetrachloroethene, Chlorobenzene, Ethylbenzene, Styrene, Xylene, Phenol, Cresol and Cyclopentene. Most of them are VOCs and the majority of the AQI monitors with VOC sensor will recognize the toxins in the air. Now, when paraffin burned releases toluene and benzene which are highly toxic and carcinogens (these fumes are the same as when diesel is burnt).Read More »

Where are the Public Air Quality Stations?

Sotirios Papathanasiou2 Comments

In my city (Almeria, Spain) there are two stations that measure the local Air Quality.

Let’s analyze them and see if they are located in the correct places and if they feature the necessary instruments for measuring the AQI properly.

The Background

It is located in “El Boticario” a park 10km outside of the city center. The coordinates according to an official document from“Junta de Andalucía” are UTMX:554439 and UTMY:4080272, but they aren’t correct (Not so professional). The real coordinates are UTMX:554319 and UTMY:4080066. This station seems to work well although they don’t feed the data in real time to the public and quite often is down.

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Vitamin B and Air Pollution

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Vitamin B diminishes effects of air pollution

This is the new title many tweets and articles write about on media, but let’s take a step back. A pill will cure the problem! Well I don’t think so.

Of course we always have to eat well and healthy, lots of vegetables and fruit. The group of Vitamin B may help with the impact of fine particle pollution on cardiovascular disease (I won’t talk about the study), but please don’t lay your hopes on a pill. Air pollution is increasing and the only solution is decreasing our footprint by burning less to none coal and fossil fuels.

Giveaway One Digital Copy

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Enter the Giveaway for one Digital Copy of my book See The Air and learn everything about air pollution.

You have to retweet my tweet including the hashtag #SeeTheAirDigital and Follow me.

Good Luck!

See The Air: The Book

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See The Air

The Essential Guide For Optimal Air Quality In Your Life

After a long time of researching and writing all the essential information about air pollution and how you can improve the air quality for you and your community, the book is ready. I am very thrilled to share this book with you all and I will be even happier if you share it with your friends and family as well. I tried to keep it as simple as possible without unnecessary information. You can see the table of contents below and take a small idea of what is inside this book.Read More »

Air pollution and Eyesight

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eye dirt

There are more than 100 studies demonstrating that poor air quality and pollution can affect your respiratory system (lungs, throat, etc) but what about our vision and our eyes. Does air pollution affects our Eyes?

The short answer is yes! Think about how you feel when your eyes come in contact with pollen (in case you are allergic) or heavy smoke, they immediately become red and itchy! The effects of the air pollution have not been studied enough yet on the same way as on the respiratory system, but I am sure scientists are doing the best they can.Read More »

How to talk to people about Air Pollution

Sotirios Papathanasiou1 Comment

talk

It is very interesting how society works and how people get influenced. I am in my thirties which means I am not a wise old man despite of that I have done my own observations.

It hard to convince people that the climate is changing and global warming is true and even if they believe you they won’t do anything about it. The reason is simple, convenience! It is a lot easier for people to do the incorrect and easy than doing the right and more thoughtful. Some people also “think” that by coming in this world everything is theirs and somehow they can waste it.

Then education plays an import part, educational systems that are insufficient and wrong in many ways. Still teaching religion subjects at school even in higher levels of education instead of teaching about the environmental issues, how to respect the society actively and being an aware person and not egomaniac through consumerism.Read More »

Find your indoor air flow pattern

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bedroomday1_0000-2

For quite some time now I am noticing that when I cook the air always flows from the kitchen to my master bedroom. The pattern that the air follows inside each house is unique, in my case both rooms are connected directly maybe because the master bedroom has bigger volume than the second bedroom at the northen part of the house. When I don’t cook, the house breathe mostly because I have the kitchen window open and forces the air to flow from north to south.

I cook with the ventilation hood on but when I bake and the ventilation is off all the odors and gases travel to my bedroom which is annoying because odors tend to trap inside the textiles and mattresses.

Why is that important? Well in case you want to ventilate the house fast, by knowing the right combination of open windows that will allow the house to breathe the greatest air quantity the quickest possible. For example this is the quickest way to get rid of CO2 without loosing too much heat in winter. In summer it allows the house to stay cool and fresh.

Volkswagen vs the World

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volkswagen

Someone will say that it feels that I am attacking them too much but in respect they don’t do anything to make things better with their cars. Millions and millions are still circulating around the world producing great quantities of toxic gases like CO and NOx. I see them and I breathe them every day on my commute to work or gym, trying desperately to avoid them, but they are too many.

They even apologized back in 2015 with an ad by giving $500 to clients for future purchase. Come on! What about the people that they don’t own one, but breathe all those toxic gases?

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Traffic Jam ↓ Air Quality

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img_5219

There was a traffic Jam from Almeria to Murcia yesterday that decrease the air quality inside the car, the windows were closed. The traffic jam last for about 10 minutes and I could feel the toxic gases surrounding me. As you can see on the picture the sky was clear and the weather conditions normal. Poor cyclists cycle around cars.