We Need a Revolution in Clean Indoor Air | The Tyee

We Need More Research on how CO2 Affects Cognition

A growing body of research indicates there are potentially large health benefits to improving indoor air quality.

Airport air sampling captures COVID, influenza viruses

Researchers say air monitoring complements wastewater testing in detecting respiratory pathogens from diverse populations, including asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic people.

A Life-Saving Checklist

If something so simple can transform intensive care, what else can it do?

Archive: New COVID-19 ‘Citizen Science’ Initiative Lets Any Adult with a Smartphone Help to Fight Coronavirus

The online study would try to help researchers gain insight into how the virus is spreading and identify ways to predict and reduce the number of new infections.

The Atmosphere needs a front door - We Can Just Do Things

The Atmosphere needs a distinct brand identify, better tools for builders, a new UX for users, and a small empowered group willing to build it all.

One Day, a Machine Will Smell Whether You’re Sick (Published 2017)

Researchers are perfecting technology that sniffs out signs of disease in breath, blood and urine.

Potted plants do not improve indoor air quality: a review and analysis of reported VOC removal efficiencies

Potted plants have demonstrated abilities to remove airborne volatile organic compounds (VOC) in small, sealed chambers over timescales of many hours or days. Claims have subsequently been made suggesting that potted plants may reduce indoor VOC concentrations. These potted plant chamber studies reported outcomes using various metrics, often not directly applicable to contextualizing plants’ impacts on indoor VOC loads. To assess potential impacts, 12 published studies of chamber experiments were reviewed, and 196 experimental results were translated into clean air delivery rates (CADR, m3/h), which is an air cleaner metric that can be normalized by volume to parameterize first-order loss indoors. The distribution of single-plant CADR spanned orders of magnitude, with a median of 0.023 m3/h, necessitating the placement of 10–1000 plants/m2 of a building’s floor space for the combined VOC-removing ability by potted plants to achieve the same removal rate that outdoor-to-indoor air exchange already provides in typical buildings (~1 h−1). Future experiments should shift the focus from potted plants’ (in)abilities to passively clean indoor air, and instead investigate VOC uptake mechanisms, alternative biofiltration technologies, biophilic productivity and well-being benefits, or negative impacts of other plant-sourced emissions, which must be assessed by rigorous field work accounting for important indoor processes.

How we can stop antibiotic resistance

It’s been dubbed “the end of modern medicine”. BBC Future asked experts to explain how we might avoid the worst effects of antibiotic resistance – a grand challenge of our age.

State of the Atmosphere (CONF 2026) - Brookie’s Blog

I should be cleaning the house right now but instead I'm writing about the ~Atmosphere~ again... It's been a full week since I first arrived in Vancouver, for A...

State of the Atmosphere (CONF 2026) - Brookie’s Blog

I should be cleaning the house right now but instead I'm writing about the ~Atmosphere~ again...It's been a full week since I first arrived in Vancouver, for...

Welcome to AirSpace

How Silicon Valley helps spread the same sterile aesthetic across the world

Evaluation of Microwave Steam Bags for the Decontamination of Filtering Facepiece Respirators

Reusing filtering facepiece respirators (FFRs) has been suggested as a strategy to conserve available supplies for home and healthcare environments during an influenza pandemic. For reuse to be possible, used FFRs must be decontaminated before redonning to reduce the risk of virus transmission; however, there are no approved methods for FFR decontamination. An effective method must reduce the microbial threat, maintain the function of the FFR, and present no residual chemical hazard. The method should be readily available, inexpensive and easily implemented by healthcare workers and the general public. Many of the general decontamination protocols used in healthcare and home settings are unable to address all of the desired qualities of an efficient FFR decontamination protocol. The goal of this study is to evaluate the use of two commercially available steam bags, marketed to the public for disinfecting infant feeding equipment, for FFR decontamination. The FFRs were decontaminated with microwave generated steam following the manufacturers' instructions then evaluated for water absorption and filtration efficiency for up to three steam exposures. Water absorption of the FFR was found to be model specific as FFRs constructed with hydrophilic materials absorbed more water. The steam had little effect on FFR performance as filtration efficiency of the treated FFRs remained above 95%. The decontamination efficacy of the steam bag was assessed using bacteriophage MS2 as a surrogate for a pathogenic virus. The tested steam bags were found to be 99.9% effective for inactivating MS2 on FFRs; however, more research is required to determine the effectiveness against respiratory pathogens.

The Sick Times - Chronicling the Long COVID crisis

Chronicling the Long COVID crisis

Opinion | When It Comes to Covid-19, Most of Us Have Risk Exactly Backward (Published 2020)

We aren’t very good at discussing trade-offs, but we need to make some during this pandemic.

The Ground Truth Institute

Could we engineer scientific revolutions, then spin out radical improvements to everyday life?