Thank you for this. As someone who lived through the hellish airscape of last year's Australian bushfires, and spent quite a bit of time discussing, advising, and publicizing air quality concerns, efforts like this are sorely needed.
At this point I've been recommending people buy PurpleAir monitors for grassroots air quality monitoring, but this looks like a really great DIY option.
I'm particularly excited about the CO2 sensor, since until this point I've been focused mostly on PM2.5 and PM10 particles, but am really keen to figure out if my stuffy apartment bedroom (and baby's room) is reaching too high CO2 levels at night (with corresponding headaches and impact on cognitive performance).
Yes, often when you seal your house to keep PM2.5 low, your CO2 values go up.
We measures this in classrooms [1] and I also wrote about the benefits of positive pressure systems to have near zero PM2.5 and low CO2 at the same time [2] even on heavily polluted days.
Are the CO2 levels mentioned in [2] above from an air conditioned room? This detail is not mentioned in the article. I am trying to understand if air exchange provided by the air conditioner makes any difference on reducing CO2 levels in the room.
being largely human-made and relatively recently created, pm (particulate matter) and voc’s (volatile organic compounds), and perhaps rarer (but potent) pollutants like ozone, carbon monoxide, and radon, are important to monitor for health. note that co2, while fashionable to be concerned about these days, is not a significant health concern (life evolved in relatively significant concentrations of co2) beyond suffocations at extremely high concentrations.
At this point I've been recommending people buy PurpleAir monitors for grassroots air quality monitoring, but this looks like a really great DIY option.
I'm particularly excited about the CO2 sensor, since until this point I've been focused mostly on PM2.5 and PM10 particles, but am really keen to figure out if my stuffy apartment bedroom (and baby's room) is reaching too high CO2 levels at night (with corresponding headaches and impact on cognitive performance).