Air Purifiers that use various ideas and technologies to clean the air from VOCs to PMs. As you can see on the green column I have mentioned the best and the cheapest way to improve air quality indoors, it’s a reminder for those that can apply this principle.

• Prices may vary during time.
• Some Companies don’t specify on their datasheets some of the infos.
• There are hundreds of air purifiers out there I have just included some of them, if you want to suggest another one please feel free to mention it on a comment below and I will be happy to add it.
• The classification of the design is based on my personal criteria, what’s aesthetically nice or not.

A #seetheair reader has purchased a Foobot and a Netatmo units and he was kind enough to answer some of my questions and help me write this comparison post between these two devices. Something adictional that I want to meantion is that he used to have an AirMentor device too but he had to return it because of the wifi-internet lack.

 

Q1) Which one do you think is more accurate? On VOCs, PMs, CO2, Temperature and Humidity. 

A1) I have the feeling Netatmo is better on CO2 readings it had the same values as AirMentor as I said if AirMentor would give the ability to check it from the web and had a IFTTT channel I would have kept it, but the levels of PMs and VOCs were more or less the same between AirMentor and Foobot. Netatmo shows always an higher RH% than the others. I also have Wirelesstag tags and they show the same RH% as Airmentor and Foobot, so I guess Netatmo is wrong. (All companies have tested their devices inside chambers but still they fail to have accurate readings because the sensors either aren’t good enough or they don’t calibrate propertly especialy the PM sensors. I read and see that many consumers struggle with that, they just don’t know what to believe.)

Q2) Have you ever had connectivity issues with any of the devices?

A2) Sometimes Foobot shows a message, but are simple glitches that do not really create a problem. (I want to mention here that I have never had connetion problem with Foobot and my Home Wifi router but yes with my parents router, but even other devices like iPhone, Android or Windows Laptop have had problems with my parents’ router, so maybe you need to check the router as well.)

Q3) Which device has friendlier user interface and which has better data representation?

A3) I would say Netatmo has a better user interface…, but there are also differences between iPhone and Android for Foobot and the iPhone version is a bit better, but probably this is personal taste. (Indeed Foobot has a bit better interface on iOS than Android.  Also Netamto offers weather forecast in the app.)

Q4) Is there anything you would like to change on both devices?

A4) Netatmo could improve the humidity sensor nothing more, on the other hand Foobot could split the PMs and add an action in IFTTT to send a notification when air pollution is lower than x value, this would help in managing the air purifier. I guess Foobot could improve the way they calculate CO2 but at the end I still have a bit the feeling that I don’t know where the truth is and maybe only with a professional device we will know this. (As I wrote before, companies have to join somehow forces and standarize their results, maybe they need to apply EU or USA Air Quality Standards or come up with new ones, but common ones.)

 

I would like to thank Angelo @ilprofessoredi for helping me writting this post and for the time he has spent answering my questions and taking photos and screenshots of the apps.

You can also read my previous comparison article “Foobot vs Awair“ here. 

When companies deciced to create an ad for their product about air quality such as air purifiers, air monitors, etc…, they always choose pregnant women or women with babies to demostrate that air pollution exists and these individuals have to protect theirselves because they are more vulnerable, but what about men? What threats do men have when they are exposed to air pollution?

Air quality and male testosterone

The chemical agents present in the environment, such as traffic pollutants, may affect male fertility. In a study that have been made free testosterone values were significantly lower in traffic policemen that were expose in daily traffic pollutants.

VOC Formaldehyde

Exposure to Formaldehyde vapor can destroy testicular structure and decrease percentages of concentration, viability, normal morphology, and progressive motility, in addition to increasing the percentage of immotile sperm.

Air Fresheners & Cleaning Products

Many consumer products are mixed with the nastiest of chemicals and then sprayed throughout your home and workplace it has as a result penetration into the lungs and sinuses.

The concern with air fresheners are not only the products themselves, such as VOCs  and terpenes, but also the byproducts produced when they hit ozone in home air.  For example, terpenes react with the ozone in the air we breath and create nasty toxins such as formaldehyde and the hydroxyl radical. Cleaning products can contain Glycol ethers which can damage sperm.

DDT – Pesticides

Other chemicals like dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), organochlorines, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and their metabolites are strongly active as estrogen mimics and are prevalent throughout the world’s soils, water, and air. Millions of tons of these estrogen mimics are used as pesticides on farms all over the world. Principally impressive are huge agribusiness operations, which use these kinds of chemicals in huge quantities to increase animal growth. Despite people in the USA think that DDT is history, it is not.

 

Reference

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21069536

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3850312/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4279615/

http://www.peaktestosterone.com/Air_Fresheners.aspx

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26832705

We have already talked about the power that plants have to remove harmful VOCs from the air and convert CO2 into Oxygen, but for some of us is hard to mantain some of the delicate plants inside the house alive. Technology is here to help and guide us how to take care plants.

Devices that we install within the plant’s pot and they monitor Temperature, Moisture, Nutrients and Sunlight for us. Key compoments for a happy plant that will help us breathe cleaner air.

• Power flower by Parrot http://www.parrot.com/usa/products/flower-power/ $49
• Plantlink https://myplantlink.com $79
• Edyn https://edyn.com $99
• Gro app http://www.getgro.com free

What Makes Fresh Air Fresh? A video by SciShow

 

Finally AirVisual app has added +11 Spanish cities into their database like Madrid, Barcelona, Girona, etc (plus more to come). The app is available for iOS and Android.

All of the air quality information you want, in one place such us PM2.5, PM10, Ozone, Nitrogen Dioxide, Sulphur Dioxide, and Carbon Monoxide. An app that provides real-time and forecast air pollution and weather data for more than +6,000 cities around the world.

One of the best features in my opinion is the 72-hour Air Pollution and Weather Forecasts all in one app. 

Check out if your city is included by downloading the Ads-Free app. My city (Almeria) isn’t included yet but I am sure they will add it in the near furure. A complete review for the app is pending, till then stay tuned.

Many people visit the gym everyday because they want to be healthy, but is the air inside the gym healthy?

My gym for instance doesn’t have any kind of window in the fitness room and depends on air ventilators to re-new the air. It can increase the cost of maintaining so do they change filters regularly or do they turn it on? Well, In my opinion it depends the season. I will talk more about it in my next post in which I am going to include some PM measurements.

Mold inside locker rooms is an other issue. You can see it inside the shower stalls, my gym has it. Black mold that grows between tiles. Very bad for your lungs among other issues that it can create like asthma, obesity, autoimmunity, allergies, brain fog and the list goes on. There is only one solution for that to send a complaint letter to the manager of the gym and ask him to clean the showers more often.

Unsafe VOCs from carpeting, glues, furniture, cleaners, paint, among others. In my gym they changed the carpeting last week and I can insure you without using any kind of equipment that VOCs are in so high levels right now. Smells so corrosive. Personally I avoid been close to these areas. Not all people are expert in air quality or even have the minimum concern about it, this is the reason we have to remind them that air is there and we breathe it all the time.

All in all, go and workout but also make it clear to your gym manager that you demand a clean healthy workout environment because at the end of the day you pay them.

I would like to thank you all, for visiting my blog in daily basis. I am very happy knowing that my blog raises the awareness about air quality and the issues we are facing nowadays.

USA, India, Denmark, UK, France, South Korea and Germany among others are the main daily visitors from.

More cool experiments and informations are about to come. As always stay tuned.

CO2 has increased the past years but do you know how much ppm of CO2 is there in our atmosphere now and how much ppm of CO2 was there in the past?

One thing is for sure that it is climbing up and we are the blameworthy.

As you can guess the estimations for the CO2 in the future will be even higher and it is estimated that in 2100 it will reach a value of 800ppm (double than now).

December historical levels -averages
1958 – 314.67 1959 – 315.58 1960 – 316.19 1961 – 317.01 1962 – 317.69 1963 – 318.31 1964 – 318.71 1965 – 319.42 1966 – 321.08 1967 – 321.96 1968 – 322.84 1969 – 324.11 1970 – 325.13 1971 – 326.01 1972 – 327.55 1973 – 328.64 1974 – 329.5 1975 – 330.9 1976 – 331.65	1977 – 333.47 1978 – 334.83 1979 – 336.78 1980 – 338.29 1981 – 339.9 1982 – 340.88 1983 – 343.07 1984 – 344.55 1985 – 345.82 1986 – 347.15 1987 – 349.18 1988 – 351.44 1989 – 352.84 1990 – 354.27 1991 – 355.07 1992 – 355.53 1993 – 356.84 1994 – 358.87 1995 – 360.61	1996 – 362.18 1997 – 364.33 1998 – 367.08 1999 – 368.04 2000 – 369.67 2001 – 371.18 2002 – 373.71 2003 – 375.93 2004 – 377.45 2005 – 379.92 2006 – 381.79 2007 – 383.89 2008 – 385.56 2009 – 387.31 2010 – 389.73 2011 – 391.83 2012 – 394.28 2013 – 396.81 2014 – 398.85 2015 – 401.85
Table data source: Dr. Pieter Tans, NOAA/ESRL

When I was born in 1984 I was breathing 344ppm of CO2, now my body is breading 403ppm of CO2 (59ppm more). CO2 isn’t a direct threat for our health but it’s a direct threat for our planet and as a consequence an indirect threat to us.

Are we capable stopping the increase of CO2, What do you think?