My guest today is Abhiir an active youth environmentalist from India.Abhiir has worked on climate change for over 8 years – particularly on air pollution and waste segregation and has been identified by the BBC as among the foremost international youth environmentalists.Twitter: @abhiirbhallaLinkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abhiirbhalla/
My guest today is Abhiir an active youth environmentalist from India.
Abhiir has worked on climate change for over 8 years – particularly on air pollution and waste segregation and has been identified by the BBC as among the foremost international youth environmentalists.
I should have written this comparison a long time ago, but I was very busy the past few months. A lot of you have insisted, so here it is.
A CO2 monitor is the number one tool that can help us understand ventilation rates in indoor environments and consequently mitigate the spread of airborne viruses like coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2), but let’s not forget the common flu either.
Carbon Dioxide CO2 can decrease our cognitive ability. The correlation between CO2 and productivity has been studied a lot for over 50 years by many academics. Interesting facts, the design standard for CO2 levels in most buildings is 1000ppm but the recommended concentration is below 700ppm. In one of the studies, Harvard researchers have found significant negative impact at 930 ppm.
According to World Green Building Council, they estimate the reduced absenteeism through sick days to be worth ~$35/m2. Again the World Green Building Council estimates that if employees’ productivity improves by even a 5% because of better IAQ, that alone would be worth ~$400/m2.
The monitors are divided into two categories, the ones that can be carried with you (portable/wearable) and the fixed ones and in most cases professional solutions. Each monitor offers different characteristics. Sometimes just because it has more features, it doesn’t mean that it is the right tool for you.
Most of the monitors offer much more than just CO2 monitoring. We spend a lot of time indoors and a more holistic approach is needed sometimes when it comes to indoor air quality (IAQ) or indoor environmental quality (IEQ).
The CO2BUDDY is the only wearable CO2 monitor that can be used in so many places and for a variety of reasons. Very important for professionals that work in places where the conditions are extreme. Closed or crowded indoor spaces.
Aranet4 HOME
Aranet4 is a small and portable CO2 monitor that surprises people. It can be used as an indicator of productivity in schools and office buildings. It is packed with smart features for those that want to log measurements and share them later on.
Awair OMNI
Awair OMNI is a well-thought product that has one aim, to help professionals see the air and address potential issues. The Awair Display Mode allows users to display any information from the monitor to a big screen inside a bar, restaurant, office, school, etc. It features up to 8 hour battery and logs data on-device. It complies with the most common certifications from WELL V1, LEED, Fitwel, LBC, and RESET.
Ethera Labs TX mini
The Ethera Labs XT Mini ensures quality and competitive monitoring systems with great cloud platforms for all needs and budgets. By connecting the monitor to BMS, they manage to achieve energy efficiency while directly managing the ventilation system, as well as portable air purifiers. It is the only monitor that can be connected to a PC via USB and upload data locally.
Kaiterra Sensedge mini
The Sensedge Mini is a great and accessible choice for those that wish to get or not air quality certification by RESET, LEED, WELL, and others as the monitor complies with their requirements. The removable sensor modules reduce maintenance costs and ensure accuracy, something really important when you want to offer comfort and health to the building’s occupants.
Airthings Wave Plus
Airthings Wave Plus is designed for professionals and homeowners (different plans). It offers a great dashboard that makes air quality data comprehensive. Excellent low power CO2 sensor that runs on two AA batteries for up to 16 months and the colour LED ring can indicate the high CO2 levels. Additionally, it can measure Radon which is a radioactive gas.
Analox Air Quality Guardian
The Air Quality Guardian comes with a large LCD display that provides plenty of clear information for those professionals that don’t have the luxury of time to continually take their phones out of their pockets in order to check the CO2 concentrations and trends. Very loud alarm and great traffic light system🚦 where 3 LED lights will turn on depending on the concentration of CO2 in the indoor environment.
airthinx IAQ
Airthinx IAQ is designed for professionals, however, it is also available to homeowners too. The dashboard offers so many features that can really help you build a solid business model around it as you can rent the device(s) to third parties. The company provides a solid ecosystem of hardware and software, hard to resist.
Quick Comparison
All monitors deliver great CO2 measurements as I have tested them all. They all feature a non-dispersive infrared (NDIR) sensor which is the best among the low-cost sensors because of their accuracy and low-power consumption.
Each monitor has unique features, so read each review individually to discover if it is the right fit for you.
In this episode, James Heydon, who lives in Sheffield UK, will share with us his professional thoughts on air pollution. James is an Assistant Professor in Criminology. You may think, how can a criminologist shed light on air pollution! Well, James is currently researching air pollution regulations, and his academic studies in human behavior could help us understand better why most people neglect to think about the air they breathe.
This is the second Analox product review that I have written on my blog. I like the product range and the solutions that Analox offer to professionals. The first review was about the CO2BUDDY, a portable/wearable carbon dioxide (CO2) monitor. In this review, I will write about the Air Quality Guardian. The Air Quality Guardian is a CO2 monitor station, designed for those that don’t want unnecessary smart features and too many bells and whistles.
The large LCD display provides plenty of clear information for those professionals that don’t have the luxury of time to continually take their phones out of their pockets in order to check the CO2 concentrations and trends. Keep in mind, the monitor measures other environmental parameters as well.
Specifications
4” backlit LCD screen
CO2 Sensor Low drift NDIR (Non dispersive infra-red) CO2 sensor with a long lifespan
Temperature and Relative Humidity Sensor
Simple 4 button navigation
Built-in data logging
Simple three-level indoor air quality indication system including:
I love combining technologies and services because this is a great and inexpensive way for companies to expand their businesses and for users to have a better experience. Awair has developed a great B2B air quality monitor the OMNI (hardware) and Djinn has developed a great B2B service (software) that combined together may offer better AQ insights or in other words, they contextualize data.
So I took the liberty to use the API Awair provides to its users and integrate it into Djinn’s platform. The reason is simple, Awair measures a plethora of parameters (temperature, humidity, PM2.5, VOC, CO2, noise, and light), and Djinn provides better insights into the impact those various indoor environmental parameters have on our health, like cardiovascular health risk and allergy risk. However, they also provide the productivity index which estimates the quality of the indoor environment with regard to the influence on productivity.
In real-life situations (offices, classrooms, etc) low-quality indoor environments may result in productivity drop up to 10% and more. Often in such cases, indoor environment quality is not comprehended by a person during the work process. The productivity index is based on research by cognitive scientists from various Universities.
According to the researchers, Human Decision Making Performance may be divided into different cognitive functions. Djinn service is able not only to estimate a general level of productivity, called Integral Productivity Index (IPI) but specify it for 9 cognitive activity areas based on research. An IPI is calculated as the average of all 9 directions. Those different models allow you to tune indoor parameters for optimal productivity according to your needs.
[EN]This is a dual-language episode. If you want to listen to the Spanish version please go to minute 18.In this episode, Luis, who lives in Murcia Spain, will share with us his everyday experience with air pollution. The main source of air pollution in his city and the general region is agricultural burning as citizens face the political unwillingness to address the issue. There is a law that prohibits the practice but it is not enforced.Please share and rate this episode with 5 stars.[ES]Este es un episodio de doble lenguaje. Si desea escuchar la versión en español, por favor, vaya al minuto 18.En este episodio, Luis, que vive en Murcia España, compartirá con nosotros su experiencia cotidiana con la contaminación del aire.La principal fuente de contaminación del aire en su ciudad y la región general es la quema agrícola, ya que los ciudadanos enfrentan la falta de voluntad política para controlar el problema. Hay una ley que prohíbe la práctica de quemas, pero no se hace cumplir.Por favor, comparte y califica este episodio con 5 estrellas.
[EN] This is a dual-language episode. If you want to listen to the Spanish version please go to minute 18.
In this episode, Luis, who lives in Murcia Spain, will share with us his everyday experience with air pollution. The main source of air pollution in his city and the general region is agricultural burning as citizens face the political unwillingness to address the issue. There is a law that prohibits the practice but it is not enforced.
[ES] Este es un episodio de doble lenguaje. Si desea escuchar la versión en español, por favor, vaya al minuto 18.
En este episodio, Luis, que vive en Murcia España, compartirá con nosotros su experiencia cotidiana con la contaminación del aire. La principal fuente de contaminación del aire en su ciudad y la región general es la quema agrícola, ya que los ciudadanos enfrentan la falta de voluntad política para controlar el problema. Hay una ley que prohíbe la práctica de quemas, pero no se hace cumplir.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) monitor sales have skyrocketed during the pandemic because they are good indicators of the indoor conditions in public places like schools, offices, restaurants, etc. The CO2BUDDY can be used in all these cases. However, it can cover even more scenarios as it functions as a tool for professionals that work in places where the conditions are extreme, for example, in dry ice shipping & logistics and COVID-19 vaccine distribution channels.
Dry ice is a solid form of CO2. As it warms, it goes through a process called sublimation, meaning it goes directly from a solid to a gas, bypassing the liquid state. As a result, huge concentrations of CO2 are released into the atmosphere and the environment. These concentrations can reach critical levels for the health of the employees.
I want my review to be as accurate as possible and despite the fact that I don’t work in harsh environments, I know people that they do, so I asked them to wear the CO2BUDDY during their workdays and share their experience with me. They were more than happy to help and they also took some photos. Before reading their experience let’s learn some technical details about the monitor.
I have come to the conclusion that rankings of cities by air pollution are not accurate and they don’t reflect the real situation in large communities because if you are unlucky enough to have a careless neighbor that burns wood/garbage/etc or you live outside the Low Traffic Neighborhoods (LTNs) and official AQ stations are far away from you then you are screwed!
Basically, your health is a subject of what others want, and there is little you can do to protect yourself. You can always stay indoors with purifies all over the house 24/7 and unable to open a window for oxygenated air to come inside. That is not correct as your freedom to open a window or walk outside your house and the right to breathe clean air are taken from you.
There are many studies talking about inequality in low-income communities. In a recent study researchers have even identified the fact that there are less trees around poor communities than in high-income ones.
Politicians marginalize the work-class constantly by refusing to find solutions to their problems. Some laws protect us from air pollution but they are not enforced. So far scientists have gathered hundred of evidence that tells us firmly that air pollution kills – more than 7 million people have died prematurely worldwide due to air pollution. Personally, death doesn’t scare me, but living a life with many medications and unable to function as a human being (Alzheimer’s among some of the most common diseases) is my biggest fear and air pollution can decrease the quality of life. It is hard to quantify morbidity which means the condition of suffering from a disease or medical condition. This is not the future I want for myself and the people around me and you shouldn’t too.
In this episode, Arabella Daniel, who lives in Melbourne Australia, will share with us her everyday experience with air pollution. Arabella has founded "Clean Air Communities" in Australia. She is active at local, state & federal government level to advocate for policy change on Clean Air. Twitter: @CAirCommunities Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cleanaircommunities Please share and rate this episode with 5 stars.
In this episode, Arabella Daniel, who lives in Melbourne Australia, will share with us her everyday experience with air pollution. Arabella has founded “Clean Air Communities” in Australia. She is active at local, state & federal government level to advocate for policy change on Clean Air.
Awair is one of the earliest companies in the space of IoT air quality monitoring with great experience and knowledge as they have released a few consumers based air quality monitors like Awair Original, Awair 2nd Edition, Awair Element, and Glow C. Recently they entered the enterprise market with the release of Awair Omni.
I have seen the evolution of the company from the beginning as they have designed some of the most iconic domestic air quality monitors. The design language of Awair Omni is exactly what you expect from an air quality monitor inside a business environment like an office. The simplicity and the elegance of the product blend harmoniously without creating unnecessary distractions to the occupants of the room yet with the right information always available thanks to the dot matrix LEDs.
See The Air 