I’m in the midsts of this right now and it’s depressing. I spent yesterday morning with a sore throat and itchy eyes and most of the afternoon hopelessly driving hours away for a box fan and furnace filter (I finally found them). All the while I should have been working. Some of my coworkers have complained of week-long headaches. If anyone else is suffering from this: you are not alone.
Willamette Valley here, and I feel you. Was really investing a lot of my optimism in the rain that was talked about for today, for over a week now — which doesn’t look like it’s gonna happen. This has been a long, long week.
Here in Bend it's pretty awful too. We live here because we love the outdoors, and we've been locked up inside since Friday. The kids are going stir crazy. Everyone was getting excited when the AQI dipped a bit under 200 yesterday (still rated "unhealthy") because we had been over 500. Now it's back up though, and they're talking about maybe things getting better by Thursday.
When I stepped out of my house last night and saw clouds and a little bit of blue I was ridiculously happy. None of the predicted wind or rain has shown up so far, I wonder if the fires are blocking the normal wind from the ocean.
Also Willammette Valley. I was excited to look up this morning, and be able to both tell where the sun was, and see the outline of clouds through the smoke. Its been a week now.
Vashon Island. I heard some rain last night and was excited to see if the smoke had lifted when I woke up. But was very disappointed to see that it hasn’t. I’ve been indoors since Friday.
There's no good timing for these fires but now just seems really bad. Can't socialize inside because of Covid, can't socialize outdoors because of smoke. Tough time to be in the West Coast.
That part, to me, is the least frustrating. I'm rather tired of having hot indoors because the PNW doesn't have air conditioning as standard in most of the apartments...
It hasn't gone under 81 in my apartment since this whole smoke started; and my office tends to sit at 83 on the ground.
> the PNW doesn't have air conditioning as standard in most of the apartments
That's because it wasn't necessary until the last 10 years or so. 90 degree days were uncommon and night temps would dip low enough to cool most places in the evening through the next morning.
It's still not really. We had 2 days over 90 in seattle, one in the smoke. And a few days at 88-89, in total I had 4 days where I turned on the window unit in my home office. If I wasnt on a deep coding problem I'd be out in the yard. 4 days a year isn't really justification for aircon
If you live by a busy/noisy street as many apartments are, it's necessary. I grew up in the PNW in the suburbs and living more in the city in apartments the need for AC is much more real.
* any apartment not facing North is going to be experiencing the sun for a LOT of the day during the summer
* most apartments are only facing a single direction, so you can't get through-air to go from one side of the house to the other to pull the cool air from the "not with sun" side.
* Washington houses love big windows that seem to take up a whole side, so it's just heat from the sun all. day. long.
* many apartments are on the second floor, or higher, so heat naturally rises and there is a real consequence to that.
In the winter, I've had to open my window to keep my old apartment under 80 while on the 4th floor with no heaters running (aside from my desktop computer and other normal electronics).
I'm not looking forward to this winter. The pandemic so far has been bearable for me because I can go outside and work in the yard and enjoy the nice weather.
(Please don't take this as making light of the situation in the PNW. I realize it's awful and don't wish it on anyone.)
I can think of one, small silver lining to these fires:
I recently read that Asian giant hornets had recently been found in the PNW, and if they weren't wiped out in a few years they'd become permanently entrenched. I find that prospect absolutely terrifying, so perhaps we'll get lucky and these fires will wipe them out.
Highly unlikely. Afaik there haven't been fires where the hornets have been. Plus, these things came across the damn ocean somehow. They are more than capable of flying away to escape a fire.
I refuse to believe that all air filtering fans on Amazon are sold out, especially considering their extreme popularity in countries all over Asia. And even if we assume that’s the case for the sake of argument, you can still buy N95 particle masks of many different brands which will protect you well from particles in the air. They also mostly protect you from viruses. There was a pretty massive supply shortage of them this spring at the start of the pandemic but I doubt they’re extremely difficult to get a hold of today, I have five in my kitchen that I bought online for about a dollar each.
Looking at the current Amazon search results for “air purifier”: first one doesn’t ship to California, second is out of stock, third one is ridiculously expensive ($800!) and been shown to have a questionable effectiveness, fourth one can only cover a small room (and won’t arrive until next week), fifth and sixth ones are out of stock.
Also most people don’t enjoy wearing an N95 mask for a long time. Imagine wearing one for 8 hours while trying to sleep because you haven’t been able to get a filter. You can try to close every window and door and such in your house, but no one’s insulation is perfect and the air will get bad after a few hours.
If people don’t “enjoy” wearing particle masks they are free to breathe smoke and filter the indoor air with their lungs instead. I have worn one for eight hours many times when walking around cities with awful AQI scores and by far the most annoying thing about it is the condensation. You also don’t need “perfect” insulation for there to be a benefit to filtering indoor air, the simple fact that it moves around less means that it will clean up in a way outdoor air can’t. The “air purifiers” you can buy with filters built in are easy to use but at the end of the day they’re nothing more than a fan and a filter with air being forced through it.
And as a final point, you seem to just fall back on the fact that there are shortages as an indication that there’s nothing to be done, and this will soon be “over” anyway. First of all, you don’t know that, and secondly, if you live in an area where this is happening, it will happen again sooner or later. If you have nothing at home to help you filter the air you’re breathing, at least prepare for next time. Disposable particle masks are not a waste of money, they’re cheap and last forever.
Is that true that the smoke will get in after a few hours? Over the last few days, as soon as I step outside, I can smell the smoke out there really bad. I thought for sure that if it was smokey in the house, my nose would be used to the smell. I mean, I can see some particles getting into the house, but it has to be far better indoors doesn't it?
Certainly yes, it's better indoors. However long it'll take will depend on how good your insulation is (a lot of older construction in the Bay Area has really poor insulation; after all, we don't have to deal with harsh winters). That said, when it gets really bad outside (AQI >150) for over a few days, it's almost certainly going to get bad inside if you don't have any filtration.
One thing worth mentioning though is that the smoke you smell is volatile organic compounds, and the smoke you see is (I believe) PM10. You're not going to smell or see PM2.5, which is what these HEPA air purifiers are designed to filter. I'm not confident in this, but my intuition is that these smaller PM2.5 particles will find their way into your home more more quickly than the larger PM10 particles will.
At least in the Portland area, everything from Amazon is at least a four day delivery estimate. Not that things are sold out (they are in brick&mortar stores, for sure), but the distribution chain is unable to keep up, with people out sick, having evacuated, or even unable to drive as far as fast in the low visibility.
Sold out until this Friday when this is all supposed to be over, unless it's a very weak filter that won't do anything for smoke. Show me where you can get genuine N95 masks (as a non-essential worker) as well please. There are tons of counterfeit masks going around.
It’s not my job to help you find N95 masks, they’re available from most hardware stores and definitely from Amazon. I just looked and there’s at least one type available on Amazon that’s not 3M in addition to full respirator masks and everything in between, and it’s easy to find other stores through Google that sell 3M disposable masks if that happens to be the only one you trust.
In addition to that, loose particle filters as spare parts are not uncommon and you can literally strap any filter on a fan, close your windows and start forcing indoor air through it to improve the ambient air quality.
If you have a furnace, you have a filter. Take the filter out of it and stick it on your box fan. Even if it's a little dirty, it's better than nothing.
I popped into Home Depot last Thursday and there were stacks of furnace filters and box fans available. Lowes and Ace Hardware websites show availability as well. Head down and take a look, YMMV in your area.
This isn't a nationwide shortage. Everyone in Seattle has been calling every Home Depot, Lowe's, and they've been sold out for a while. My local one in Bellevue was cleared out of all filters on Sunday, not even just the FPR10's. Ace's seems to be the most annoying. It lists a bunch of HEPA filters, then the product pages shows all of them are unavailable for pickup.
wow, the temtop website sent my laptop fans spinning with all the crap it tries to load, and that my content blockers went into overdrive blocking (especially, and inexplicably, from reviewsimportify.com).
still, i'm interested in getting a good pm2.5 monitor to pair with my air purifier, as air pollution is a much bigger issue than covid (air pollution certainly affects vast swaths of people across the world, persistently and largely invisibly, and is only getting worse over the decades).
is waiting for the wifi version (currently sold out) worth nearly twice the (sale) price of an m10?
The WiFi versions have negative value to me, the apps are usually terrible and they are almost impossible to pair (typically only have 2.4ghz radios).
I went with the P10 which does exactly what I want (AQI and PM2.5). It looks nice, it works, and is highly visible from a distance (even has a 6hr battery which makes it easy to move between rooms).
The only other one I'd consider is the one that does CO2.
As a bonus the Temtop sensors are less than half the price of their competitors while being at least twice as good.
It doesn't do any of those things, it just senses AQI, PM 2.5 and puts it on the screen.
My experience with the devices that attempt to do the things you want is that they suck.
They do each of those things poorly and their basic detection functionality (most important feature) is also bad. (The reddit thread I linked to has details).
If a device existed that did those things and was actually good I'd recommend it.
As it is, everything in the market is awful.
At least these Temtops have the basic functionality down and do that part really well.
If you can do some really basic soldering then any i2c capable board (like raspberry) + PMSA003I + ccs811 and influx+grafana or something to dump the data into shoule give you the monitoring+archive solution.
Coal smoke in that case, not wood smoke. Coal is a terrible pollutant. If you survive the wood smoke, the literature suggests you'll be back to normal in a couple weeks.
Wood is made of complex carbohydrates (lignins). The worst thing you’ll get in the smoke is carbon particles and maybe a small amount of aromatic hydrocarbons like benzene.
Coal is made of up of a mixture of aromatic hydrocarbons like a anthracene, naphthalene. These are already toxic to humans. Add metals like mercury, antimony, etc.
Also just a guess, coal is a finer particulate matter than wood, I think that might give more particles off. Wood dust, nope, coal dust? Hell no. Also radioactive!
Regarding carbon-14, there is so little of it that it makes no sense to even think about it (about 1 in 10^12 atoms). In addition, all biological matter (including you and the food you eat) has carbon-14 present in it -- that's the basic principle behind carbon dating. In fact, ash from wood burning would probably have more carbon-14 if anything.
But yes, the article you linked talks about trace amounts of uranium and other materials that actually could be harmful.
The half life of C-14 is much shorter than geologic formation time for coal. Coal's radioactivity is due to primordial nuclides and their decay chains.
Spreading dangerous misinformation is not helpful, and you are trying to convince them of something- namely that this air pollution is no big deal.
PM2.5 pollution, even at levels far lower than being seen now, is associated with literally hundreds of negative outcomes- lower IQ, worse test scores in standardized tests, more depression, worse ADHD, more asthma, more cancers (of both the lungs and other body parts), emphysema, as well as a whole host of issues related to full-body inflammation (ranging from auto-immune disorders to digestive problems).
I didn't say, "No big deal." I am aware of the danger. Thus, "if you survive."
The issues you're describing are studied after what I'd say is long term exposure. So far it's less than a week. A person with healthy lungs and no related problems will be back to normal if this ceases in a relatively short time. Of course, that doesn't mean we should relax about smoke season becoming a month-long annual event.
They say dosage makes the poison, but duration is important, too.
No, that's not the takeaway. I wear my N95 outside, run my air filter inside, and avoid strenuous activity. However, there's no need to panic if you get a cough from the smoke.
Wood smoke kills around 2 million people a year, though that generally takes long term exposure.
So, while you’re not incorrect that individual wildfires are not a major concern, living in places where such exposure is common is a significant issue.
It is probably because a billion? people still use open wood fires indoors with poor ventilation. Visualize a fire in the middle of a hut with a pot on it and a small hole in the ceiling. AQI in that hut is going to be very bad. Creating systems where people can afford to use propane or other gas stoves are a huge win for the health of humanity and ecosystems.
Die drei Plagen des Bauern: Hausrauch, ein undichtes Dach und eine untreue Frau
> The three plagues of the farmer: household smoke, a leaky roof and an unfaithful wife
Supposedly an old saying, but almost certainly retcon. Not necessarily wrong though, look at houses a few hundred years ago, that sort of thing is still ubiquitous in the developing and pre-developing world.
It's not the wood I'm worried about, it's all the non-organic material in the smoke. Plastic, household chemicals, paint, etc... In some years we'll see a massive spike in cancer and respiratory issues from these fires.
I doubt there is a significant enough amount of those materials being burned. Millions of acres of forest has burned compared to relatively few buildings.
I’ve been using an app that converts AQI to equivalent cigarettes smoked per day. It’s not perfect but it’s something I can wrap my head around as a meaningfully bad number.
These apps really put this into perspective for someone who used to smoke a pack a day 15 years ago :)
So I guess spending all day outdoors is not THAT bad?
iOS encourages developers to make apps for their services because Safari's features and compatibility lag behind other browsers, and it doesn't implement PWA functionality.
I'd really rather not download a whole app for this so my apologies if this answer is readily available in the app, but...
I keep seeing these kinds of conversions (AQI to equivalent cigarettes per day) but I never see numbers on how long you need to be outside for that to be the case. Is it based on assuming someone on the coast (where AC is rare) having to keep their windows open all day? Is it based on 1-2 trips outside per day? How does it incorporate exposure time into the conversion rate?
Yeesh. I'm sorry. I'm in CO and even the levels here get me all of the symptoms you mentioned. Last week I drove 1700 miles and only escaped the smoke during a summertime snowfall. It rebounded and while driving I was suppressing a mild anxiety attack bc there's nothing you can do to escape it.
Driving at sunrise/sunset reminds me of the original Mad Max. Expect real and depressing.
Most, if not all, of the smoke traveling that far will be up near the jet stream level of the atmosphere. It will impact your sunlight but will have little to no effect at ground level.
