Ancestors

Written by Kate Nyhan on 2025-01-19 at 18:00

Guess what! The Brookline Public Library has CO2 monitors that you can borrow! Very useful for checking out the ventilation in any indoor space that is ventilated (mechanically or naturally) with outdoor air. FREE!!!!!

https://brookline.minlib.net/Record/.b42432650

[#]Brookline #BrooklineMA #IndoorAirQuality #COVIDisAirborne #CovidConscious #CovidCompetent

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Written by Kate Nyhan on 2025-01-19 at 18:03

The Brookline Library has ten CO2 monitors; eight of them are currently on the shelf waiting for you to pick them up and take them home (or out and about) for a couple weeks.

Four in the main library in #BrooklineVillage

Two in the branch in #CoolidgeCorner

Two in the branch in #Putterham

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Written by Kate Nyhan on 2025-01-19 at 18:13

Some basics about CO2 ppm (parts per million):

There's some CO2 in outdoor air; my monitor is reading 433 right now in Washington Square. Think of that as the background level. Not great in terms of climate change, for sure, but this thread is about CO2 and indoor air quality/ventilation.

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Written by Kate Nyhan on 2025-01-19 at 18:17

Then I went inside to pick up takeout. Now the CO2 ppm reading is 577. That increase from the background level? That extra CO2 in the air in the restaurant might have come from the customers and the workers breathing out, and from the gas burners in the kitchen.

577 is higher than the outdoor number, but it's also quite low indeed for an indoor space.

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Written by Kate Nyhan on 2025-01-19 at 18:19

The CDC has a webpage about using CO2 monitoring to track and improve ventilation; they said to consider supplemental air filters when the CO2 ppm is above 800.

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Written by Kate Nyhan on 2025-01-19 at 18:21

This restaurant isn't near that level right now, but a lot of grocery stores, bookstores, restaurants, and also cars and homes can get CO2 ppm concentrations that are way higher.

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Written by Kate Nyhan on 2025-01-19 at 18:28

For example, I took this pic right after leaving a grocery store. That high above the background level? When I was in the grocery store, about 2% of the air around me was recently exhaled by the other people in the store.

I like people but I don't like them that much! Especially right now, when we know from CDC data that New England is still at the "very high" level of SARS-CoV-2 in our region's wastewater.

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Toot

Written by Kate Nyhan on 2025-01-19 at 18:38

Here's an interesting way to play with CO2 monitors in an interventional way, not just observational: go in your car, keep breathing, and play with environmental variables - windows open or closed, ventilation set to off/recirculate/outdoor air.

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Descendants

Written by Kate Nyhan on 2025-01-19 at 18:43

So why does CO2 ppm matter?

• too much CO2 makes you sleepy. Kids do better on standardized tests when they have fresher air!

• when there's a lot of CO2 in the air from people breathing, if any of those people currently have COVID or flu or RSV, those viruses are going to be in the air too, floating around in tiny aerosol particles, waiting for you to inhale them (unless they get captured by the filter media in air filters or masks)

• SARS-CoV-2 aerostability is higher in high CO2 environments

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Written by Kate Nyhan on 2025-01-19 at 18:46

We can't smell or taste or hear high levels of CO in indoor air. But with these monitors from the library, we can find out -

Hey, if I have six people breathing in my living room, and I crack two windows, the CO2 numbers are as low as if I had one person breathing in the room with the windows closed

Or

Hey, this grocery store's ventilation system copes a lot better with the crowd at 8 pm than the crowd at 6 pm

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Written by Kate Nyhan on 2025-01-19 at 20:30

When I went to Burdick's in Coolidge Corner. I was wearing a respirator, but my friend who was drinking hot chocolate and eating cake wanted to leave when they saw these numbers, so we went for a walk.

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Written by Ruth [☕️ 👩🏻‍💻📚✍🏻🧵🪡🍵] on 2025-01-19 at 18:44

@kdnyhan when we aren't using it for other stuff , I keep the CO2 monitor in my office so I can stave off that sleepiness

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Written by Callisto on 2025-01-19 at 19:47

@platypus @kdnyhan The first Thanksgiving after I got mine, I realized how hilarious it is that people still go on about tryptophan, and overindulgence, and this that and every possible explanation for sleepiness after Thanksgiving dinner ... except for the fact that you have triple the normal # of people in the house, you've been running the gas stove for hours, and CO2 is probably in the 2000s.

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Written by Itamar Turner-Trauring on 2025-01-19 at 19:48

@kdnyhan We have learned that our bedroom has terrible ventilation and therefore high CO2 (bad for sleep quality) so we now run a fan pointed at the door and the CO2 monitor proved this helped. etc.

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