Understanding Regulation PM2.5

What happens when you don't have proper ventilation, when you don't have sufficient air changes in your home or place of work? Airborne contaminants including dangerous toxins can accumulate in the premises sight unseen because PM stands for particulate matter that is 2.5 microns or smaller and that makes them invisible. Microscopic particles that size when breathed in, can pass through your nostrils and get stuck in your lungs or continue on to your bloodstream where they can then get into the various organs in your body. The standard of limiting or preventing particles that size from contaminating the air in your home or place of work is referred to as it regulation PM2.5 by the WHO [World Health Organization] and the EPA [the american Environmental Protection Agency]

The above photo was recently taken at a rural house two hours NW of Montréal. How many things are wrong in that photo which relate to air quality? Having a central VAC is actually the best way of cleaning a home but only if there is an exterior exhaust for the "used air". Note in this case the attachment on the right side of the canister is actually a noise muffler. Spewing the "used air" into the basement of the house is very dangerous in regard to PM 2.5. All vacuum cleaners will pull up the dirt that's on the floor but the dirt that you can see in the canister will probably not do you much harm, but the "used air" will contain the particles that are too small to be collected which includes the viruses, the bacteria, the pet dander that are too small to be seen and literally pass right through the machine. It takes months for some of those particles to come down to floor level at a rate which is inversely proportional to their size. The coronavirus is 0.3 μm [microns] but most viruses are much smaller than that. Ordinary vacuum cleaners and even central ones like the one shown in the photo essentially recontaminate the air with particles that are less than 2.5 μm every time they are used.

Note the exposed fiberglass next to the canister on the left side. Some of the most dangerous microscopic particles are not biodegradable. Asbestos fibers are a well-known example but the same is true of microscopic fiberglass fibers. They will get stuck in the lungs and scar the tissue so that a cancer will occur after a gestation period of perhaps 20 years. Fiberglass as an insulation is seep to use provided is encapsulated and not left exposed. If there is a forced air furnace around, the air being circulated will cause those dangerous particles to be discharged into the air which was the case at this house. I see the same problem in many other houses during the course of doing building inspections. One of the favourite locations for the canister is the mechanical room that has the air handling equipment serving the whole house. The canister of central vacuum cleaners should always be located in a garage or a location the furthest away from the forced air furnace – never in the mechanical room.

At this house the canister is located in the basement next to the wood burning stove that is used to heat the house. Using a wood burning stove or a wood burning fireplace to heat a home will generate microscopic particles that are 2.5 μm or less. We now have environmental regulations which allow slow burning stoves that are sealed units emitting very little smoke providing you use properly dried hardwood and you can have a stove that uses wood pellets. But that was not the case at the house being visited where the wood being used came from pine and fur trees in the area, polluting both the interior and the exterior. A most important matter to consider is how impossible it is to control temperature and relative humidity in such cases. The air coming out and being distributed of the wood burning stove was at 37°C [really hot] and really dry [20%Rh]. Thermostats or humidistats don't apply because you can't vary the heat or the dryness.

It is worth considering all that in terms of what is happening in Third World countries. Consider the following article which appears today on the internet – air quality news.com PSN – part of the PUBLIC SECTOR NEWS network

Air pollution is linked to childhood pneumonia

Air pollution is associated with 2 million additional pneumonia cases in children under 5 in South Asia, according to a new study led by Stanford University.?

The researchers analysed data on particulate matter (PM2.5) pollution alongside community health surveillance data in Dhaka, Bangladesh.??

They found that pneumonia incidence among children under 5 increased by 3.2% for every 10μg/m3 increase in PM2.5 pollution.?

The mean PM2.5 level in Dhaka was on average over three times higher than the World Health Organization standard. The researchers have therefore suggested that the association between air pollution and child pneumonia suggests that air pollution is a major contributor to the leading cause of child death in Bangladesh and across South Asia.

These findings are also approximately double that of prior estimates of pneumonia hospitalisations associated with increased PM2.5.

The researchers have said that the difference from previous findings may reflect the young age of the study population – most children in the study were two or younger.

Allison Sherris, a postdoctoral research fellow in Earth system science at Stanford’s School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences said: ‘Everybody wants to protect kids’ health. Now, we have evidence of a clear health benefit to children from reducing ambient PM2.5 emissions in Dhaka.”

‘Specifying the impact of industry-generated air pollution on child health provides compelling evidence to support interventions to reduce pollution.

‘This is often more salient to politicians than the marginal contribution of emissions to global climate change. We’re still only looking at a small slice of the potential health outcomes that might be linked to this kind of air pollution, and we still lack perfect measurements of exposure to it. The true health burden is likely much greater.’

#PM 2.5 #airquality