[00:01.770 --> 00:02.950]  Yeah, my name is Todd.
[00:03.150 --> 00:11.470]  I'm going to be speaking a little bit today about some of the research that I've been doing over the past few years about indoor air quality and thinking about pollution.
[00:12.130 --> 00:17.570]  Really quickly, my background is as a radio journalist, so I did a lot of reporting for NPR for a long time.
[00:17.770 --> 00:23.370]  So I've always had a big penchant for words and trying to utilize vocabulary in any fun way that we can.
[00:23.650 --> 00:37.550]  And so what I've been up to over the past few years is trying to bring together my journalism background with the tinkering that I do, also with the independent research that I do to try and put together different types of like hardware materials that help us to learn a little bit more about the
[00:37.550 --> 00:41.170]  environment that we're living in, with a special focus around air quality.
[00:41.590 --> 00:49.210]  So, yeah, it's my first time at HOPE and it's the first time that I'm actually giving any sort of like presentation or talk about this research as well.
[00:49.430 --> 00:51.950]  So, yeah, I'm envisioning it.
[00:52.030 --> 00:53.430]  I'm going to be speaking a little bit extemporaneously.
[00:53.930 --> 00:59.650]  I'm going to have my slides, but also just be riffing because the main point of the talk for me is just to meet folks.
[00:59.770 --> 01:05.230]  And if there's anything that galvanizes you, anything that you're coming across that activates you in an interesting way.
[01:05.570 --> 01:09.890]  I'd love to wrap with you as I'm, yeah, just going to be around the conference for the rest of the weekend.
[01:10.250 --> 01:13.450]  But with that, just wanted to get into it.
[01:14.870 --> 01:15.350]  Yeah.
[01:15.690 --> 01:22.270]  And so big thing for me, I think I started getting more into like air quality and air pollution a few years ago.
[01:22.550 --> 01:33.730]  And things really hit the fan back in the summer of 2023, which is when we had the Canadian wildfire smoke coming down here, kind of like clogging everything up for everybody over here on the East Coast.
[01:37.470 --> 01:43.650]  You know, and I don't know where every I think there's a lot of folks who are from New York, but even if you were in like the eastern seaboard of the U.S.
[01:43.710 --> 01:48.230]  or like the northern states, you know that this was totally like the vibe back that summer.
[01:48.330 --> 01:48.430]  Right.
[01:48.750 --> 01:53.010]  So a couple of years ago, we had these wildfires, this wildfire smoke coming down from Canada.
[01:54.070 --> 02:02.930]  And I just realized when I was in a situation, this is right around the time when I was actually starting to hack together different types of like hardware and different types of particulate matter sensors.
[02:03.730 --> 02:05.670]  I was taking a special interest in what was going on.
[02:05.870 --> 02:12.010]  But, you know, to add insult to injury, I remember not just dealing with like the smoke itself.
[02:12.430 --> 02:19.610]  But one of the things that was really disturbing to me is when I went to try and find some information about what was going on around me really wasn't available.
[02:19.930 --> 02:20.870]  I can go online.
[02:21.130 --> 02:25.290]  There were a bunch of news articles that would just defer and tell me to like check out the air quality index.
[02:25.290 --> 02:26.770]  And I'm like, OK, cool.
[02:26.950 --> 02:33.150]  But that really wasn't saying anything to me that I couldn't feel in my lungs that I wasn't seeing outside with my own two eyes.
[02:34.110 --> 02:46.630]  And so it became a big thing for me of trying to figure out different types of ways of thinking about air quality and like the ways that we're exposed to it and trying to come up with more material and personal ways to think about what I'm like.
[02:46.630 --> 02:53.710]  Like how this air is impacting me and different ways that I could work on better practices and becoming proactive and protecting myself and others around me.
[02:56.590 --> 03:00.650]  So got me thinking one in the midst of all this wildfire smoke.
[03:01.350 --> 03:04.730]  These are becoming like more frequent environmental calamities for us.
[03:05.770 --> 03:13.070]  Wildfire smoke, not just coming from the West Coast or coming from Canada, but also out here on the East Coast, just sort of having like a drier climate.
[03:13.270 --> 03:16.770]  So more and more minor smoke events popping up here.
[03:16.930 --> 03:25.790]  But one of the things I wanted to get to get into was trying to understand outside of these bigger events, what are the more mundane ways we can try and think about air quality?
[03:26.090 --> 03:33.730]  Because for me, that's one of the most important things about air pollution or about the air that we breathe is it's really mundane, right?
[03:34.110 --> 03:36.710]  We're breathing about 20,000 breaths a day.
[03:36.890 --> 03:43.030]  And voluntarily, you're going to be breathing whether when you're sleeping, when you're eating, when you're working out, whatever it is that you do.
[03:43.410 --> 03:53.850]  And so it seems to me, even aside from the bigger events that receive all of our attention, when we finally start paying attention to air, what are the more mundane ways you can try and think about air quality?
[03:55.050 --> 04:04.370]  So one of the ways that I started when I was researching, one of the things that got me a little bit interested, I tried to think about different ways of bringing it together with other things that were going on around me.
[04:04.510 --> 04:13.130]  And I think one of the fun things I was thinking about was this whole like 10,000 steps a day thing that seemed to captivate everybody like a long time ago.
[04:13.130 --> 04:24.950]  Like that wasn't really my thing, but one of the magical things about it for the folks that did get into it, at least for me as from an outsider's perspective, was the way that this changed from something of just like measuring and counting.
[04:25.310 --> 04:29.070]  And it slowly started to turn into something that people were like becoming competitive about.
[04:29.330 --> 04:32.150]  It became like the 10,000 steps that people were into.
[04:32.290 --> 04:35.950]  It became like a figure that people like they could own.
[04:36.150 --> 04:38.570]  And so we can do that for 10,000 steps.
[04:38.570 --> 04:43.450]  I think, you know, that's something that's aspirational, something that you don't actually have to do.
[04:43.690 --> 04:48.990]  It got me thinking, what can we actually do when it comes to the 20,000 breaths that we're taking in each day?
[04:49.390 --> 04:52.770]  And how can we make some like meaning out of like a number like that?
[04:54.730 --> 04:55.690]  I'm sorry.
[04:56.030 --> 04:57.210]  Just want to make sure.
[05:01.720 --> 05:02.200]  Yeah.
[05:02.520 --> 05:08.600]  And so with each of those breaths, especially, and it's not just the quantity of them, we get 20,000 breaths each day.
[05:08.600 --> 05:13.000]  But it's also important for me to think about what's the quality of these breaths?
[05:13.380 --> 05:16.080]  We don't actually know how many of those are going to be good.
[05:16.520 --> 05:19.320]  What's the chemical components in each breath that we're taking in?
[05:19.480 --> 05:24.800]  Because with every breath that we're taking, it's pretty much just like a chemical cocktail, whatever is around us.
[05:25.760 --> 05:28.880]  Pollen, ozone, particulate, smoke, whatever it may be.
[05:29.080 --> 05:38.440]  So it seems important to me that one of the things that we do is trying to get like a better understanding of exactly, not just the number of breaths that we're breathing, but what's the quality of each of these breaths that we're going through?
[05:39.020 --> 05:44.500]  Especially since most of the breaths that we're taking in are about 90% are happening indoors.
[05:45.060 --> 05:48.500]  And indoor air can be two to five times as polluted as outdoor air.
[05:48.700 --> 05:56.080]  Yet, most of the tools that we use to sense and understand the air quality around us are really remote, right?
[05:56.080 --> 06:06.740]  And so we've got an image right here of one of the 4,000 federal regulatory monitoring machines that the EPA and other state governments around the country operate for over 330 million people.
[06:07.140 --> 06:10.840]  And then on top of that, we've also got a... so over here is the MODIS satellite.
[06:11.200 --> 06:19.000]  And what that is just like one of the satellites that NASA uses to try and get a better understanding of particulate conditions in North America.
[06:19.000 --> 06:20.660]  And so these things are cool.
[06:20.860 --> 06:29.400]  They've done a lot of good, especially thinking about the regulatory... regulatory systems that we've had that popped up around the time of the Clean Air Act.
[06:29.760 --> 06:34.240]  What that's resulted in is a much cleaner air for outdoor air for most Americans.
[06:34.640 --> 06:41.160]  There's still a lot of work to be done though, not just indoors, but also thinking about the airs that you're actually going to be breathing yourself.
[06:44.570 --> 06:47.990]  So with those tools, we get the air quality index, right?
[06:48.170 --> 06:52.550]  Which is the main communication layer of environmental hazard to most of us.
[06:52.950 --> 06:56.750]  And I don't know about y'all, but for me, this is like never really quite cut it.
[06:56.930 --> 07:04.490]  This is just like a screen grab from like not too long ago on my phone, but air quality index is 36, which is better than yesterday at about this time.
[07:04.970 --> 07:05.410]  Right?
[07:05.610 --> 07:08.090]  Completely non-descriptive, not really helpful.
[07:08.090 --> 07:15.890]  And again, I'm always thinking about vocabulary and the different types of language that we could attach to these types of things, aside from just like satisfactory.
[07:16.710 --> 07:20.610]  And so for those tools, thinking about like air quality as a...
[07:21.790 --> 07:30.610]  The translation layer, for me, became an important part as I was going about this process of building, not just for myself, but for others as well.
[07:30.610 --> 07:35.490]  And trying to engage other people in projects that allow them to understand the air around them.
[07:35.810 --> 07:39.790]  I started stumbling into like other ways that people are starting to think about air quality.
[07:40.030 --> 07:45.510]  And including one of the projects that I was working on in Salt Lake City a couple of years ago.
[07:52.240 --> 08:00.600]  One of the participants in this project, and I'm going to get to it a little bit later, she ended up designing her own personal air quality index based on her husband's farts.
[08:00.600 --> 08:01.400]  Right.
[08:01.860 --> 08:07.160]  And so this is the type of thing that I'm trying to get at is through different types of like measurement tools.
[08:07.440 --> 08:17.880]  And really just like taking the, the numbers that you're looking at, but also more importantly, looking at the trends that are inspiring you and looking at the different air events and episodes that are happening in the air.
[08:18.060 --> 08:25.700]  If you can start to name those and call those out, you can start to put yourself in a process of being a little bit more proactive about what's going on around you.
[08:25.700 --> 08:28.220]  If you can just go about the process of naming it.
[08:28.680 --> 08:33.960]  And so I'm going to be speaking about, yeah, like her own air quality index a little bit later based on these farts.
[08:34.160 --> 08:36.300]  But these are the things that are possible, right?
[08:36.400 --> 08:42.420]  As you're getting into this, you don't just have to stick to government standards and things coming off of apps.
[08:42.540 --> 08:47.680]  When you think about the air that you're breathing, but you can come up with your own nomenclature and ways of thinking about this stuff.
[08:50.200 --> 08:55.340]  So all that to say, to get at this idea that you're not actually breathing data.
[08:55.600 --> 09:10.800]  I think so much of the work that we've been so much of the effort, a lot of the money that we've put around air quality monitoring over the past few decades has been spent on visualizing something that's invisible, which is why when you check out air quality maps and we have the color coding for the
[09:10.800 --> 09:13.660]  AQI and whatnot, all of this stuff is important.
[09:13.940 --> 09:19.260]  But I think there's a bit of a fetishization happening around like the actual data itself.
[09:19.660 --> 09:24.960]  And instead of thinking about the data, I'm trying to like make it a little bit less visual and more sensible, right?
[09:25.160 --> 09:27.540]  So thinking about the ways that things are impacting you.
[09:27.740 --> 09:34.220]  And more importantly, thinking about the different types of ways that you're actually impacting the air around you that's going to come back and impact you.
[09:37.400 --> 09:48.980]  So we are exposed to a lot of different components in our air, usually as a stand in when, again, like the chemistry of air is always going to be really complex, even like a simplified context.
[09:49.220 --> 09:57.340]  But one of the things that's happened is oftentimes when people are talking about air quality, they're kind of just thinking about particulate matter as a stand in for everything.
[09:57.700 --> 09:59.280]  So thinking about particle pollution.
[09:59.280 --> 10:04.120]  So this bad boy that I built right here is focused on PM 2.5 and PM 10.
[10:05.500 --> 10:09.860]  But again, it's just a lot more complicated than just what we're looking at right here.
[10:10.000 --> 10:14.040]  But for the purpose of the rest of my talk, just going to be focusing on PM 2.5.
[10:14.800 --> 10:16.560]  And just a couple of things about that.
[10:16.680 --> 10:23.860]  I'm not sure where everybody is when it comes to like your particulate matter pollution and your literacy around like other pollutants.
[10:23.860 --> 10:30.120]  But when it comes to particulate matter, the key to know is that the damage is in the size it is.
[10:30.360 --> 10:35.720]  So the smaller the particle, the more deeply it can penetrate into your respiratory and cardiovascular system.
[10:36.080 --> 10:44.820]  So you'll see like right in the middle, we have PM 2.5, which is any particle that's going to have a diameter of 2.5 micrometers or smaller.
[10:44.820 --> 10:53.340]  PM 1, which is also going to have a diameter of 1 micrometer or smaller.
[10:53.660 --> 10:55.840]  And then obviously the same concept for PM 10.
[10:56.300 --> 11:05.580]  And so thinking about the differences in these particle sizes and what the different types of damage that they can do to you, it's important to think about what's happening on around you.
[11:05.580 --> 11:22.200]  And so PM 1 and PM 2.5, because of their size, they're more likely to cross over into your respiratory and cardiovascular system, especially PM 1, which is showing a lot more research is showing its tendency to be able to cross the blood brain barrier and actually have cognitive impacts as well,
[11:22.400 --> 11:24.040]  not just cardiovascular and respiratory.
[11:24.640 --> 11:28.500]  PM 10, on the other hand, because it's usually the product of more coarse particles.
[11:28.820 --> 11:32.480]  So think about out here in New York, there's always somebody building something.
[11:32.480 --> 11:37.140]  So a lot of the construction dust is usually going to be more PM 10 than PM 2.5.
[11:37.360 --> 11:45.720]  And so while these can do damage to you, it's much more likely that the PM 10 is going to be stuck in the upper respiratory tract or kind of like at the back of your throat.
[11:46.280 --> 11:59.660]  But when PM 2.5 is popping off, it's important to think about not just the size, but a lot of research is coming out that's highlighting the importance of the actual chemical composition of these particles as well.
[11:59.660 --> 12:09.220]  For the longest time, the only thing that we were really focusing on was the actual size, like the diameter size and how far these things could penetrate into the body.
[12:09.380 --> 12:22.040]  But one of the things that's been happening over the past few years is a lot more people are learning through their own personal research that when it comes to the actual components in the air and what PM 2.5 is composed of, you're going to have different, you're going to have different outcomes.
[12:23.960 --> 12:37.100]  And so for example, we'll just say PM 2.5 particles that are a product of car exhaust are going to be more dangerous to you than PM 2.5 particles that are a product of the olive oil that's spraying up whenever you're cooking something, right?
[12:37.280 --> 12:39.780]  For the longest time, we thought the size was everything.
[12:40.100 --> 12:43.820]  Now we're learning that the actual chemical composition is just as important.
[12:49.270 --> 12:51.610]  Now, why is all of this important?
[12:51.850 --> 12:56.930]  Like this idea of trying to get a better sense of your own personal air quality and what's going on around you?
[12:57.370 --> 13:11.950]  I think for me, one of the most important things that I notice, and it just, it goes beyond anything with air quality, but environmental sensing and climate change in general, we don't seem to have a good sense of what we're actually doing to the environment around us.
[13:11.950 --> 13:22.130]  I think by developing better practices of paying attention to what's going on around you, you can also be a better steward of your environment, not just for yourself, but for other people.
[13:22.670 --> 13:31.140]  Because in these personal connections, these are the things that put us on a path to actually identify different types of things like environmental inequities, like pollution inequities.
[13:31.850 --> 13:38.150]  Because I think too much of our pollution discourse involves around personal exposure levels and how can I protect myself?
[13:38.150 --> 13:43.670]  And that's the type of stuff that pushes people into buying $400 air purifiers, right?
[13:44.170 --> 13:50.050]  Just leaning into the individualistic, capitalistic way of just like a race to the bottom of what can I do to protect myself?
[13:50.390 --> 13:53.170]  But there are alternative ways and frameworks of thinking about this.
[13:53.490 --> 14:06.970]  And if you can develop these patterns of noticing your impact on the environment and the ways that it comes back to impact you, more importantly, what are the ways that you're impacting the environment that are going to end up impacting other people who you may not see or may not even know?
[14:06.970 --> 14:11.050]  Because if there's one thing that we know about air, it doesn't know any sort of boundaries, right?
[14:11.290 --> 14:15.010]  No such thing as your air versus my air, my air versus your air.
[14:15.190 --> 14:17.750]  We're going to be switching it up all the time, right?
[14:18.090 --> 14:29.390]  So in terms of like thinking about these different types of pollution inequities, I think taking a note first and foremost on the impact that we're actually having on the environment around us can be a really positive step.
[14:29.810 --> 14:37.150]  And I think, you know, that's not on an individual level, but thinking about the actual impact on a larger level, right?
[14:37.330 --> 14:54.090]  We have a good amount of research that suggests that the folks who consume the most and are just like constantly buying stuff and having stuff ordered to us, having stuff ordered to them, their impact on air pollution is higher than the folks who aren't ordering as much stuff,
[14:54.210 --> 14:54.310]  right?
[14:54.610 --> 15:05.770]  And so thinking about the impact that you're actually having every time you want to make this order on Amazon or anything else, it's not just the package that you're getting, but also the last mile delivery that's happening.
[15:05.970 --> 15:21.790]  And if you're ever curious, there's a lot of really good research coming or reporting coming out of the team from Consumer Reports about this, something really similar to this out in Red Hook, Brooklyn, where they've been looking at the impact of Amazon delivery warehouses and the impact that the
[15:21.790 --> 15:31.350]  trucks going to and from the warehouses as they're delivering goods to other folks throughout the borough of Brooklyn, the different types of impacts that's having on Red Hook, Brooklyn residents.
[15:31.850 --> 15:38.430]  And again, these aren't the folks by and large who are like ordering all this stuff, but they're bearing the brunt of the pollution that's happening from it.
[15:45.900 --> 15:47.940]  Here... I hope this is okay with everybody.
[15:48.080 --> 15:51.960]  This is just like a little bit on regulation, just trying to give a little bit of context.
[15:52.860 --> 15:59.960]  So what we're checking out right here is the EPA's National Ambient Air Quality Standards from 1997 up until today.
[15:59.960 --> 16:06.140]  And what we're looking at... I want everybody... This is not an actual like measurement, but think of this as like a speed limit.
[16:06.360 --> 16:14.440]  This is the limits that the EPA sets on what should be considered a good amount of like raw concentration of PM 2.5 on an annual level.
[16:14.800 --> 16:21.420]  And you can see there's been a lot of work and a lot of change that's been happening over the past... over the past like three decades or so.
[16:21.420 --> 16:28.160]  Because in 1997, EPA started off with 15 micrograms for a cubic meter for PM 2.5.
[16:28.420 --> 16:32.520]  In 2012, that got revised down to 12 micrograms for a cubic meter.
[16:32.700 --> 16:41.040]  And as of February of last year, we are currently sitting at a really good benchmark of 9 micrograms for a cubic meter of PM 2.5.
[16:41.040 --> 16:48.640]  Now, that may not seem like a really significant thing, just this drop from this tightening from 15 down to 9.
[16:49.080 --> 17:03.860]  But the EPA estimates that by 2032, tightening the standard is going to save about 4,500 additional American lives each year and cumulatively have prevent about 800,000 hospitalizations for asthma over this time.
[17:03.860 --> 17:06.680]  And so, these are the types of things that we're thinking about.
[17:07.100 --> 17:13.860]  Small concentration volumes can have an outsized impact on what's going on and the ways that things are going to be impacting you.
[17:14.120 --> 17:16.020]  And so, every little bit counts.
[17:16.640 --> 17:20.320]  Now, saying that, we're at 9 right now, as we sit.
[17:20.640 --> 17:33.720]  But there's a lot of epidemiological research and a lot of activism pushed out there by environmental justice activists that shows that we can actually tighten the standard to 7 or 8 micrograms for a cubic meter and save even thousands of more lives.
[17:33.720 --> 17:35.580]  But we haven't, right?
[17:35.900 --> 17:40.540]  And so, a lot of this regulation stuff, while there has been a lot of success, is still a trade-off.
[17:41.240 --> 17:52.060]  And so, thinking about the different types of trade-offs that we've had to historically go through, and now where we're sitting at right now, as we're looking at a situation where our responses to...
[17:52.060 --> 17:57.160]  Where our responses and resources to chronic air exposure and air pollution are just kind of like thinning out.
[17:58.100 --> 18:08.500]  We're seeing the rollback of environmental protections, the budget cuts at the EPA, and seemingly, like an agency that's dissolving right in front of our eyes.
[18:08.660 --> 18:15.280]  I think one of the important things that everybody should take away is the fact that you're going to have to get a little bit more active about this stuff, right?
[18:15.280 --> 18:28.080]  You're going to have to start thinking about your own personal air quality a little bit more, because the traditional authorities that we've come to entrust with telling us what's going on are quite literally just dissolving right in front of us.
[18:31.780 --> 18:33.220]  So, what can everybody do?
[18:34.000 --> 18:45.820]  I think everybody in this room is in a very special situation where, no matter where it is, you can get involved in this fight against like air pollution, and trying to think about different frameworks of engaging like your air quality.
[18:46.260 --> 18:51.260]  If you're thinking about hardware, you can try and put together like your own air quality monitor.
[18:51.620 --> 18:56.320]  Think of different types of ways of going about a calibration process that you can share with other people.
[18:56.320 --> 19:02.880]  If your bag is software or design, you can come up with different ways of getting data from point A to point B.
[19:03.080 --> 19:11.320]  You can start thinking about different types of indices and visualizations that will help this stuff become a little bit more material and more personal for people.
[19:11.740 --> 19:23.400]  Or even if you're in a policy, think about different types of ways of engaging policy briefs and ways of adding some sort of like qualitative data to the quantitative data that we're usually picking up when it comes to air quality.
[19:23.400 --> 19:28.580]  So, no matter who you are, you can get involved in rewriting this narrative anytime that you'd like.
[19:31.600 --> 19:40.320]  So, what you're looking at right here is an air quality monitor that I designed for a collaborative project in Salt Lake City.
[19:40.540 --> 19:46.720]  It was a collaboration between the Salt Lake City Tribune, NPR Utah, and the Utah News Dispatch.
[19:46.720 --> 19:52.840]  And each newsroom was thinking about going about climate narratives a little bit differently.
[19:53.440 --> 19:59.460]  And they each wanted to get away from this traditional story of, well, air quality is really bad.
[19:59.820 --> 20:01.440]  Okay, so what do we do with that?
[20:01.640 --> 20:11.180]  And so, working with these newsrooms, I decided to pitch an idea where I would just design bespoke air quality monitors for folks who actually were interested in their own indoor air quality.
[20:11.180 --> 20:25.800]  Get these monitors into people's homes, and then from there, try and get a sense of what was not just going on, but the different ways it was impacting people and their feelings that they were taking away from, as they had a little bit more literacy and knowledge about what was going on with them.
[20:26.420 --> 20:34.440]  So, we're going to be talking a little bit more about this in a bit, but what are we going to get into in terms of like hacking and just putting together different types of devices?
[20:34.440 --> 20:47.460]  There's an entire suite of like tools that you can pick up from SparkFun, Adafruit, Digikey, a lot of different components that are open-source that you can just pick up and start getting into your own process of putting things together.
[20:48.000 --> 20:56.340]  And I want to like put out a word for, yeah, putting together your own air quality monitor rather than just buying something commercially comes with a few different benefits.
[20:56.860 --> 20:59.880]  One, you can actually build around the pollution of your own interests.
[21:00.160 --> 21:04.620]  A lot of the things that are commercially available are only going to speak to particular matter.
[21:04.860 --> 21:10.800]  But if you happen to have an ozone issue that you're concerned about, it won't necessarily speak to that.
[21:11.000 --> 21:18.480]  If you can identify and work on, if you can work on identifying the different things that you're interested in, the pollutants, you can build around that.
[21:18.900 --> 21:20.860]  It's also going to save you a lot more money.
[21:21.440 --> 21:31.500]  The little monitor that you're looking at right there is the same one if you're familiar with the PurpleAir network, the same sensor that air quality particular matter sensor that they use in their networks.
[21:31.940 --> 21:34.120]  It's called the PMS 5003.
[21:34.640 --> 21:37.620]  This bad boy usually runs anywhere from $30 to $40.
[21:38.460 --> 21:41.960]  And it's one of the most ubiquitous particular matter sensors on the market.
[21:42.180 --> 21:44.600]  You'll see it pop up in a lot of different commercial objects.
[21:45.080 --> 21:50.480]  Thing is, a lot of those air quality monitors can sell for $250 to $300, right?
[21:50.480 --> 21:54.520]  And oftentimes they're just a $40 sensor shoved inside some PVC.
[21:55.020 --> 22:03.380]  So if you're looking for, like, something to be a little bit more cost effective and also just give you the advantage of being able to, like, stay on top of what's going on.
[22:03.560 --> 22:09.720]  Because a lot of the monitors that you buy off the shelf, they're not really going to allow you to, like, open things up.
[22:10.200 --> 22:12.280]  Trying to do, like, a teardown is not really...
[22:12.280 --> 22:14.800]  I kind of want you to just go out and buy, like, a new monitor.
[22:14.800 --> 22:16.900]  But that's not really what you need to do.
[22:17.160 --> 22:27.180]  If you can actually just develop a literacy and familiarity with your own particulate matter sensor, there's a lot of resources online that can help you to, like, get into it, crack it open, clean it out.
[22:27.420 --> 22:40.000]  Because one of the things a lot of people don't consider is when it comes to especially particulate matter sensors, and usually a lot of them are operating by sucking in, like, little samples of air into a little chamber.
[22:40.380 --> 22:50.000]  And if that chamber becomes too clogged up with too many particulates and if it just sits there, you're going to start to notice some drift and data inaccuracy from the data that you're getting from the air quality monitor.
[22:50.300 --> 23:02.400]  So no matter what you're doing, whether you're building your own or whether you're going to be out there buying something off of the shelf, if you can crack into these bad boys and actually clean out that internal chamber, that's going to be one of the biggest keys that you can actually go through
[23:02.400 --> 23:06.640]  to actually make sure that you actually have good data for more than like a year.
[23:09.540 --> 23:28.420]  So this is a really simple circuit, the foundation of what I was building off of, and just wanted to, yeah, put this out there for, really, this PMS 5003 is a pretty good air quality particulate matter device if you have an ability to, like, co-locate it and calibrate it.
[23:30.080 --> 23:39.940]  Aside from that, the only couple things that you would need to get going and start getting data out of any of these devices would be the actual particulate matter sensor itself and a microcontroller of your choice.
[23:40.300 --> 23:48.300]  Now, I'm choosy, I like the ESP32, but if you want to rock with the Raspberry Pi or an Arduino, that's totally on the table as well.
[23:48.380 --> 23:49.420]  You can get down with that.
[23:49.680 --> 23:56.480]  But the key thing is that this is a really cool and really simple sensor to work with, utilize the UART protocol.
[23:56.760 --> 23:59.720]  So you really only have to, like, hook up four wires.
[23:59.860 --> 24:02.580]  Actually only two, because ground and voltage are going to be a thing.
[24:03.240 --> 24:15.660]  But thinking about just connecting your serial data and serial clock from your particulate matter sensor to the microcontroller via jumper wire cables, and then you're going to start automatically getting some data out of this bad boy.
[24:15.660 --> 24:15.880]  Right.
[24:19.270 --> 24:21.190]  And this is just a quick example.
[24:21.330 --> 24:22.530]  Damn, this is going real fast.
[24:24.250 --> 24:27.790]  By the way, I'm going to be around if anybody wants to talk a little bit more about this.
[24:27.830 --> 24:32.890]  I can talk a little bit about the interpretation of the data, putting your own air quality monitor together.
[24:33.310 --> 24:39.850]  But when it comes to like dealing with the time stream data, as things are coming out, you want to get a sense of exactly what you're interested in.
[24:39.850 --> 24:48.410]  Again, for me, the purpose of this project, I was focusing primarily on PM 2.5 and just focusing on that bin bucket and that data set.
[24:48.670 --> 24:58.170]  And so for me, I think one of the things that's important to note is that the actual individual or like isolated event, not really all that important.
[24:58.550 --> 25:09.590]  When you start to tie together a sequence of events and start to put those into like air episodes or trends that you're noticing, then you can start to develop a little bit more meaning and literacy about what's happening around you.
[25:10.090 --> 25:10.190]  Right.
[25:12.270 --> 25:17.150]  And I'm going to get into some of these projects that I designed for these newsrooms in Salt Lake City right now.
[25:19.270 --> 25:19.770]  Sorry.
[25:22.610 --> 25:23.110]  Yeah.
[25:23.390 --> 25:30.850]  So again, the purpose of this project was to go about helping folks develop a different type of vocabulary around their indoor air quality.
[25:30.850 --> 25:37.410]  Salt Lake City, the Great Salt Lake is drying up, introducing more pollutants into the air over there.
[25:37.690 --> 25:41.990]  And then there's also a situation where it sits... the town is in a valley, right?
[25:42.250 --> 25:45.110]  So it tends to like trap a lot of pollutants that are in the air.
[25:45.350 --> 25:50.850]  So it's one of those unspoken regions where there's actually a pretty significant and severe PM 2.5 issue.
[25:52.630 --> 25:59.950]  And these folks, these newsrooms just wanted to get about like a different type of narrative than the ones that we're usually used to when it comes to reporting.
[26:00.850 --> 26:04.670]  Not just the alarmism, but I wanted to try and get an understanding of what was going on with people.
[26:05.070 --> 26:08.950]  So the way that I went about that was designing a set of air quality monitors.
[26:09.250 --> 26:17.410]  Once we got them in people's homes, I was logging data and also working with people on helping them to interpret and understand the data that they're going through.
[26:17.890 --> 26:22.290]  One of the most important things that I got folks doing is because of my background in journalism.
[26:22.290 --> 26:23.790]  I'm going to go and I like to hear people talk.
[26:23.930 --> 26:26.650]  I had everybody diarize each day, right?
[26:27.270 --> 26:38.310]  Taking down diary notes of not just what they were noticing on the dashboard that I gave them in their air quality monitor, but also getting a sense of like the different types of activities that they were going through over the course of the day.
[26:38.310 --> 26:52.730]  And just even like this little push right there was pushing folks into a position where they could become like a little bit more familiar with attaching, making different types of associations between the things that they were doing and the different types of impacts that would have either on their carbon dioxide levels or on their PM 2.5 levels.
[26:57.550 --> 27:01.590]  So I'm going to get into a couple of these, yeah, a couple of those households right now.
[27:03.050 --> 27:13.970]  So one of the households that had my air, one of my air quality monitors, what we ended up doing was kind of just like showing like there's no such thing as pure air.
[27:14.430 --> 27:23.750]  Again, I think when you're buying something like an air purifier, it kind of promotes this idea that there's some sort of like pristine or clear air, not a thing, there's always something going on.
[27:23.750 --> 27:31.730]  And working with this household, they had an air purifier and they thought their PM 2.5 levels are going to be like really, really good.
[27:31.910 --> 27:36.610]  So actually particulate matter wasn't all that much of a concern for them, which is true.
[27:36.890 --> 27:46.390]  But I showed them over the course of three months and just like taking like high resolution data over the course of these three months that indeed their PM 2.5 levels were down.
[27:46.390 --> 27:54.090]  But because they had a purifier and the air purifier promoted a behavior where they decided to consistently keep like their windows closed.
[27:54.370 --> 27:57.470]  What they ended up having were elevated carbon dioxide levels, right?
[27:57.890 --> 27:59.250]  So there's always a trade off.
[27:59.450 --> 28:04.350]  If you're not going to have PM 2.5, there's going to be something else that you might want to be concerned about.
[28:04.350 --> 28:12.070]  And these are the types of things that I just, again, want to like highlight and front load because these are the types of things that we're not really thinking about.
[28:12.270 --> 28:16.270]  And the folks who were selling us expensive devices aren't really interested in telling folks.
[28:16.590 --> 28:24.610]  So it was fun, just like working with this household over the course of a few months and having them get a sense of the trade offs that are happening by having this purifier.
[28:25.190 --> 28:29.290]  Particulate levels are going to be low, but your carbon dioxide is going to be a little bit higher.
[28:31.550 --> 28:39.690]  Another one of the households that had my, one of these monitors, I noticed a trend every night around 9pm.
[28:40.630 --> 28:45.870]  Really severe jump in PM 2.5 in a household that was otherwise pretty good.
[28:45.870 --> 28:56.710]  I think around eight or nine micrograms for a cubic meter on average, but there would just be a consistent jump to around between 14 to 15 around 9pm every evening.
[28:57.270 --> 29:00.230]  And so working with these folks, I asked like, what was going on?
[29:00.370 --> 29:01.670]  Like, what am I seeing right here?
[29:01.790 --> 29:03.090]  What's, what's good?
[29:03.910 --> 29:08.990]  And they told me that, um, these partners, they had their lung love language.
[29:09.190 --> 29:15.730]  One of the things they would do right before bed every night was they would roll a spliff and have a smoke and then go to bed.
[29:15.830 --> 29:15.930]  Right.
[29:16.750 --> 29:20.470]  And they could pick that up in a particular matter sensor in the data that I was picking up.
[29:20.470 --> 29:25.050]  Now, never going to be my bag to try and have an impede on anybody's love language.
[29:25.290 --> 29:27.250]  If that's how you get down, by all means.
[29:27.530 --> 29:36.730]  But the important thing for me, once we can start to notice this trend and highlight it, there are different things we can do to be a little bit more proactive about what's actually happening.
[29:36.730 --> 29:45.910]  And so after noticing this and speaking with this household, one of the things we did was just like, hey, a really simple opportunity to, if you're going to smoke, do your thing.
[29:46.090 --> 29:50.190]  But make sure you turn on that overhead ceiling fan before you smoke.
[29:50.330 --> 29:54.830]  Make sure you open the balcony doors and just promote like a little bit more ventilation.
[29:57.430 --> 29:59.530]  Or just switch to edibles.
[29:59.530 --> 30:00.650]  That's the whole thing too.
[30:01.070 --> 30:01.130]  Right.
[30:04.630 --> 30:05.510]  But yeah.
[30:05.630 --> 30:10.190]  And so what you get from that is after we started to like notice this trend, we started talking about it.
[30:10.290 --> 30:18.810]  And then we just came up like a really simple mitigation fact, mitigation factor of just, hey, ventilate your space before you're going to do what you're going to do.
[30:19.490 --> 30:21.410]  We had a significant drop, right?
[30:21.550 --> 30:26.130]  From 14 and a half down to an 11 and a half micrograms per cubic meter.
[30:26.130 --> 30:33.950]  And again, these may not seem like big drops, but three microns of chronic exposure over time is a really significant thing.
[30:34.090 --> 30:41.470]  And so these are the types of behaviors that we wanted to promote by just being able to associate, hey, the simple thing that we're doing every night.
[30:41.590 --> 30:45.150]  We didn't know the impacts that was having on us, but there are impacts.
[30:45.510 --> 30:45.590]  Right.
[30:45.770 --> 30:47.530]  And that goes for everybody and everything.
[30:47.770 --> 30:54.570]  It's not just smoking, not just smoking a spliff, but also lighting an incense, lighting incense, lighting candles.
[30:54.570 --> 31:01.350]  So many of the different things that we're doing in our houses that make a home a home are going to end up polluting our air a little bit.
[31:01.450 --> 31:01.570]  Right.
[31:01.890 --> 31:04.030]  Especially if there's a combustion process involved.
[31:04.290 --> 31:07.130]  That doesn't mean you should necessarily pull back and not live your life.
[31:07.150 --> 31:09.350]  You need to enjoy the space where you live.
[31:09.470 --> 31:10.450]  You need to be in your home.
[31:10.750 --> 31:15.070]  But at the same time, you can start to develop different types of associations with these activities.
[31:15.070 --> 31:18.210]  You can start to mitigate in a preemptive way.
[31:19.010 --> 31:20.990]  A lot of people don't think of air fresheners.
[31:21.170 --> 31:23.950]  That's another thing that pollutes indoor air pretty nicely sometimes.
[31:23.950 --> 31:24.990]  Yeah, absolutely.
[31:25.210 --> 31:25.350]  Okay.
[31:25.650 --> 31:26.030]  Absolutely.
[31:26.190 --> 31:27.110]  We've got air fresheners.
[31:27.190 --> 31:28.070]  And this is another thing.
[31:28.790 --> 31:42.510]  In this same household right here, aside from the smoking, there was also a correlation that we started to notice between, I think, Thursday and Friday nights, where they would get ready to go out and just started to notice things like dry shampoo and a lot of the stuff, hairspray that they were utilizing.
[31:44.450 --> 31:47.270]  PM 2.5 levels just skyrocketed.
[31:47.270 --> 31:47.450]  Right?
[31:47.770 --> 31:54.630]  And so again, get gussied up, go look cute, but there are different things that you might want to do before you start getting ready to go out.
[31:59.400 --> 32:01.540]  And right here, coming back to the farts.
[32:02.820 --> 32:10.220]  So at this one household, a woman's husband comes home.
[32:10.440 --> 32:13.660]  He just wanted to let off a little bit of steam after a rough day of work.
[32:13.660 --> 32:16.220]  So he wanted to be a goofball.
[32:16.340 --> 32:21.020]  And he thought it would be cute to just like let a fart rip right into my air quality monitor.
[32:22.580 --> 32:23.340]  Cool beans.
[32:24.280 --> 32:29.980]  And when he did it, the PM 2.5 levels jumped up to 25 micrograms for a cubic meter.
[32:30.420 --> 32:30.680]  Right?
[32:31.360 --> 32:34.980]  Now, I want to be clear, his flatulence actually didn't have anything to do with that.
[32:35.240 --> 32:39.260]  If you have a stink booty, it's actually not going to get picked up by any particulate matter sensor.
[32:39.840 --> 32:45.160]  But what probably happened with that is when he was farting into it, probably kicked up like a little bit of dust.
[32:45.320 --> 32:48.420]  And that's what had the particulars spike up a little bit.
[32:48.520 --> 32:48.620]  Right?
[32:53.220 --> 32:56.780]  We can do that too.
[32:56.920 --> 32:58.120]  We can build around that as well.
[33:00.060 --> 33:00.460]  Yeah.
[33:00.640 --> 33:03.420]  So just like noticing this jump up to PM 2.5.
[33:03.620 --> 33:07.280]  This is pretty early on in the project that I was building with this household.
[33:07.280 --> 33:07.500]  Right?
[33:07.840 --> 33:16.880]  And so it became important for this person when she started to notice that, Hey, my husband's farts produce about 25 microns of PM 2.5.
[33:17.240 --> 33:23.680]  Let me start getting a better grasp on other things and associating that number with other things that are going on in my environment.
[33:23.900 --> 33:24.140]  Right?
[33:24.300 --> 33:28.380]  So these are just some of the things that she was saying, like cooking dinner, that's about two farts.
[33:28.780 --> 33:30.800]  Burning incense, one and a half farts.
[33:30.980 --> 33:31.260]  Right?
[33:31.260 --> 33:36.600]  And so over the course of three months in this project, she just started to think about every little activity that she did.
[33:36.760 --> 33:43.220]  When she would notice any sort of consequence on the dashboard, she would start to relay it in terms of her own like husband's farts.
[33:43.680 --> 33:44.020]  Right?
[33:44.020 --> 33:46.580]  And so for me, this is like a basic, big success.
[33:47.240 --> 33:58.340]  That way to like make things more personal, more material, and pushing in a way that you can actually understand the PM and the air around you was a really, really big success story for me.
[33:58.340 --> 34:00.240]  And I'm glad that she took that with her.
[34:01.000 --> 34:05.860]  Because she said, and it's funny, but it's also made the data real suddenly.
[34:06.460 --> 34:08.580]  Those numbers had, those numbers weren't abstract.
[34:08.940 --> 34:13.320]  They had a reference point we could picture, laugh about, and compare against.
[34:13.700 --> 34:22.260]  And again, if you can find these types of ways of making air a little bit more material and personal for you, you can come up with your own ways of doing something similar.
[34:23.220 --> 34:29.680]  So I am talking a lot, but I'd love to make this an invitation to just like hear from you all as well.
[34:29.840 --> 34:31.680]  So I'm just going to like stop right here.
[34:31.940 --> 34:33.140]  And let's do some Q and A.
[34:35.440 --> 34:35.820]  Please.
[34:36.720 --> 34:37.840]  This is a great talk.
[34:38.080 --> 34:38.320]  Thank you.
[34:38.440 --> 34:43.640]  I'm wondering, you know, you had mentioned the article about the metal toxins in LA.
[34:44.000 --> 34:48.600]  In my understanding, part of the concern with the Great Salt Lake drying is arsenic.
[34:48.600 --> 34:59.140]  So I'm wondering if the ship you mentioned, like, what the breadth of the pollutants that it detects, and if you see improvement in the space that could be for the consumer-grade sensors.
[34:59.440 --> 34:59.780]  Totally.
[35:00.000 --> 35:09.320]  I think, again, this, what I put together for this project, primarily focused on particulate matter and carbon dioxide, and also picked up on relative humidity and temperature.
[35:09.640 --> 35:14.240]  But again, there's an entire like suite of different pollutants that you can buy sensors for to pick up on.
[35:14.240 --> 35:14.260]  Yeah.
[35:16.320 --> 35:19.000]  I'm sorry, did I, I think you had a second part to your question.
[35:19.100 --> 35:23.320]  I was just going to say, are they in the similar $30, $40 price range for maybe the more specialized sensors?
[35:23.540 --> 35:24.020]  No, no.
[35:24.160 --> 35:29.600]  I think the, like the technology for particulate matter sensors is a little bit further along than like others.
[35:29.800 --> 35:37.480]  So if you were to buy a sensor for like ground level ozone, you can probably get one for like anywhere from like 35, like, yeah, 45 to like $60.
[35:38.020 --> 35:43.880]  But like a lot of the particulate matter sensors, they're usually going to be a little bit cheaper than other pollutants that you're trying to measure for.
[35:44.240 --> 35:44.840]  Thank you.
[35:45.100 --> 35:45.240]  Yeah.
[35:46.540 --> 35:50.340]  Could you say anything about VOCs, volatile organic chemicals?
[35:51.620 --> 35:57.480]  So the question was about, or asking me to like talk a little bit about VOCs, which are volatile organic compounds.
[35:57.740 --> 36:06.120]  And again, that's another great starting place when you're trying to think about your indoor air quality, because so many of the things that you're going to be doing indoors are going to produce VOCs.
[36:06.120 --> 36:10.280]  And that'll be things again, like hairspray.
[36:10.620 --> 36:18.000]  It can be oftentimes like a lot of off gassing from the furniture and different things that you have in your, in your home.
[36:18.140 --> 36:22.180]  They're going to be, yeah, contaminating your space with VOCs.
[36:22.520 --> 36:28.040]  And so there are definitely like a good amount of like sensors out there that can pick up on different volatile organic compounds.
[36:28.040 --> 36:40.580]  By and large, they're usually not going to be, I think the ones that I've usually come across, they say a little bit less about the actual particularities of the pollutant that you're, the actual organic compound that's being measured.
[36:40.580 --> 36:51.180]  But they all usually have like their own proprietary index, where they're just like trying to take an entire like chemical cocktail of different VOCs, and put that on a scale that you can try and like make sense of.
[36:51.440 --> 36:53.560]  But there are definitely VOC sensors out there.
[36:56.760 --> 37:03.440]  You had mentioned that, you know, you need to clean these particulate sensors really frequently, maybe.
[37:04.260 --> 37:11.220]  Did you, how did you determine like how often did you communicate, how did you communicate that to people?
[37:11.660 --> 37:19.120]  Yeah, so I think one of the things, even with this bad boy right here, it can be a little bit difficult, if I'm being honest, to get into.
[37:19.480 --> 37:24.880]  Again, because when you crack the, when you start getting into it, you don't want to actually mess anything up.
[37:25.020 --> 37:30.460]  And so if you have like any sort of experience with like tearing down hardware, I'd say go about it like that.
[37:30.740 --> 37:33.360]  There's also some tutorials online that you can get into.
[37:33.560 --> 37:39.040]  But in terms of like frequency, I think it depends on the actual like sensor that you're going to be utilizing.
[37:39.040 --> 37:43.820]  But I'd say by and large, every like nine to like 12 months, if you have an opportunity.
[37:44.120 --> 37:49.620]  But again, I think this is also kind of contingent on what it is that you're actually going to be having come into it.
[37:49.740 --> 37:58.800]  If you're living in a space that does have relatively like low levels of PM 2.5, the internal fan chamber probably won't get as clogged up.
[37:59.140 --> 38:13.340]  But if you're noticing you have like a lot of data going, like you have a lot of particular high levels of PM 2.5, that's going to put you in a position where you want to be a little bit more proactive and a little bit more responsive to trying to get in there and clean down this internal fan chamber.
[38:13.700 --> 38:19.340]  So I think a lot of it is just contingent upon the actual like sensor that you're using and the environment that it's going to be deployed in.
[38:19.900 --> 38:25.040]  Yeah, I guess in your case, maybe you weren't asking them to do it.
[38:25.240 --> 38:26.320]  No, not in my case.
[38:26.460 --> 38:30.420]  Also for the project that I did in Salt Lake City, these were running for only like three months.
[38:30.580 --> 38:34.400]  And so at that point, it really wasn't anything to like try and tear down at that point.
[38:34.400 --> 38:40.640]  But I'd say when you start pushing, you know, closer to like a year or so, no matter your situation, you want to start to think about that.
[38:42.140 --> 38:42.640]  Hey, Fred.
[38:42.720 --> 38:45.200]  So kind of along those lines, how do you calibrate it?
[38:45.340 --> 38:50.660]  If not like officially, is there some standard like by a match, like a candle, you know what you should see?
[38:50.800 --> 38:51.060]  Totally.
[38:51.660 --> 38:52.020]  Yeah.
[38:52.120 --> 38:53.700]  So the question is about calibration.
[38:54.100 --> 38:55.840]  I'll be honest, I was really fortunate.
[38:56.420 --> 38:59.880]  I was in, I was a researcher at Columbia University.
[39:00.080 --> 39:05.480]  And so I just started like hanging out with some folks over in the atmospheric sciences department.
[39:05.720 --> 39:16.140]  And I had a really cool opportunity to co-locate my air quality monitors alongside some, yeah, scientists who had like calibrated sensors, which is how I got my calibration process.
[39:16.360 --> 39:19.600]  But I understand that's not something that everybody can do.
[39:19.740 --> 39:21.340]  So a couple of things on that.
[39:21.980 --> 39:28.060]  If you are absolutely thinking about like data integrity, going about the calibration process is important.
[39:28.280 --> 39:40.420]  But again, with these sensors right here, depending on what you're going for, I think you can get away with and you can get away with not actually having like absolute fealty in terms of like the data that's coming out, right?
[39:40.740 --> 39:47.500]  Like you're going to want to understand the data, like the, you don't want to have things that are like totally off balance and totally out of whack.
[39:47.500 --> 40:01.940]  But I think by and large, between the responsiveness and the, excuse me, the responsiveness of these types of particulate matters, you can start to pick up on the different types of trends that are going on around you and develop a different type of like signature of what's happening in the air.
[40:02.940 --> 40:09.400]  Because even like on a stock value, each of these bad boys are going to be like a little bit different and coming out of the box.
[40:09.400 --> 40:22.560]  So, I'd say the only way that I've come across when it comes to the calibration process is one, if you can come across in sensors that's already been like calibrated before, and just like co-locating like that and getting something, that's your best bet.
[40:22.960 --> 40:39.100]  Aside from that, I've seen other people toss things up online like different calibration factors for, if you are measuring for PM 2.5 and you want to use the relative humidity and temperature as ways to help you to calibrate, there are different types of algorithms that you can deploy on that front as well.
[40:39.840 --> 40:41.200]  Now, I've seen people doing that.
[40:41.660 --> 40:43.420]  I haven't personally gone about it that way.
[40:43.560 --> 40:47.920]  But I know that that's something, if you don't have access to co-location ability, it's something you can do.
[40:47.920 --> 40:57.660]  Yeah, but again, keep in mind, as you were saying, the impact value is less critical than seeing a change.
[40:58.980 --> 41:03.280]  If you get an approximate number from one of those references, that's good enough.
[41:03.480 --> 41:06.880]  If you have a bathroom scale, it's not quite accurate.
[41:07.200 --> 41:12.140]  You don't care so much if it's 180 versus 183.
[41:12.780 --> 41:15.140]  Did it go up from one day to the next?
[41:16.400 --> 41:20.160]  Were you 183 last week or 186 the next week?
[41:20.300 --> 41:22.400]  It's a change that matters a lot more.
[41:22.540 --> 41:23.860]  It's the same thing with this mostly.
[41:24.060 --> 41:24.360]  Totally.
[41:24.780 --> 41:25.660]  That's what I'm getting at.
[41:25.760 --> 41:29.300]  It's more significant to think about these changes and what you're actually picking up.
[41:29.500 --> 41:39.300]  Because again, the actual particulate matter sensors operated by the EPA that I showed a little bit earlier, each of those devices is anywhere from $30,000 to $40,000 for a machine.
[41:40.200 --> 41:43.260]  That particular matter costs about $30, right?
[41:43.540 --> 41:45.060]  So you're going to get what you pay for.
[41:45.320 --> 41:47.380]  Which isn't to say that you shouldn't...
[41:48.160 --> 41:50.520]  You can totally trust what's coming out of it.
[41:50.700 --> 42:00.220]  But I think the legwork that you put in on interpreting what's coming out and what's significant to you is where you want to put the actual emphasis and value in your own personal air monitoring process.
[42:03.330 --> 42:04.390]  Can I get you back here?
[42:04.390 --> 42:26.550]  Yeah, recently there's been a big uptick in science-driven sort of, I guess, approaches or expertise around both environmental sorts of things and health-related impacting things.
[42:26.550 --> 42:29.290]  Did you engage with any people who were, like, kind of deep in that?
[42:29.450 --> 42:38.310]  Or did you engage with anybody who was thinking about, like, health and, like, science?
[42:38.570 --> 42:38.910]  I'm sorry.
[42:39.370 --> 42:43.910]  Like, people are really skeptical of science-driven approaches to...
[42:45.730 --> 42:47.090]  No, I hadn't.
[42:47.230 --> 42:55.890]  Like, maybe I'm just, like, really fortunate because I feel like everybody I speak to, like, when I talk about, like, yeah, I do stuff around air quality, they get super geeked about it.
[42:56.270 --> 42:58.530]  Like, yeah, I've never met anybody who's, like, skeptical.
[42:58.530 --> 43:00.010]  Like, no, no, stay away from that.
[43:00.070 --> 43:00.830]  We don't want to touch that.
[43:01.150 --> 43:03.410]  I think, by and large, everybody's been, like, really cool.
[43:03.690 --> 43:06.550]  But that's something I haven't come across, and I'd love to wrap a little bit later.
[43:06.990 --> 43:07.790]  Okay, great.
[43:08.450 --> 43:08.910]  Thank you.
[43:09.730 --> 43:10.310]  Please, Frank.
[43:10.310 --> 43:10.750]  Hi.
[43:10.930 --> 43:15.110]  You mentioned that the air purifiers aren't a silver bullet for this.
[43:16.010 --> 43:20.690]  Would you recommend, like, continuous extractor fans in houses?
[43:21.670 --> 43:25.550]  In addition, have you looked into any kind of detoxing from this?
[43:26.650 --> 43:32.190]  The question was about different types of devices to purify, aside from, like, air purifiers.
[43:32.970 --> 43:40.370]  Yeah, like, you know, you mentioned that the particulates indoors are higher than outdoors.
[43:40.670 --> 43:48.610]  And I was wondering about, you know, bathroom extractor fans, you can get them that continuously run to replenish the air, I guess.
[43:48.810 --> 43:50.390]  Would you advocate that?
[43:51.610 --> 43:54.510]  To be perfectly honest, I haven't even, I haven't considered that.
[43:54.730 --> 43:55.890]  I'll be perfectly candid.
[43:56.070 --> 43:58.910]  Over the course of, like, my research, I haven't considered anything like that.
[43:59.150 --> 44:10.530]  I think a lot of the folks who I've been working with, there's oftentimes, like, one of the more pressing things that they have to deal with is the fact that you can't, they can't afford, like, more expensive technologies, right?
[44:11.530 --> 44:19.730]  So one of the simple things that they always, that folks have to do or is just, like, thinking about more simple solutions of, like, productive, like, ventilation of spaces.
[44:20.010 --> 44:26.970]  And so if you have the ability to, like, buy different products and actually have, like, the wherewithal to install it in your home, that could totally be a thing.
[44:27.250 --> 44:32.590]  But I think a lot of the folks that I've usually worked with are usually just trying to think about, like, more simple processes.
[44:35.050 --> 44:35.570]  Frank?
[44:35.990 --> 44:43.150]  Is it essentially one of being kind of a balance between where the air is better at what point in time?
[44:43.650 --> 44:47.770]  Is that at what point is it better to open windows to sort of get late?
[44:47.970 --> 44:55.330]  And at what point is the pollution outside worse than whatever off-gassing or whatever content, you know, inside?
[44:55.710 --> 44:56.030]  Totally.
[44:56.550 --> 45:00.490]  Yeah, I think this is a question about the, like, the interplay between indoor and outdoor air pollution.
[45:00.490 --> 45:13.030]  Am I... Yeah, this is one of the things that I looked at for this project in Salt Lake City, is, like, taking data from, like, outdoor sensors and seeing what the impact would be on indoor, on folks' indoor air quality.
[45:13.150 --> 45:25.570]  And I think that's absolutely something to, like, take into consideration, even outside of, like, these, like, wildfire events, but even thinking about one of the households I worked with in Salt Lake City, their neighbors were, like, barbecuing a lot in the summertime, right?
[45:26.090 --> 45:29.030]  And then this barbecue smoke would come back and impact them.
[45:29.030 --> 45:31.250]  And so they were really interested and curious about that.
[45:31.630 --> 45:42.290]  And so it became a situation of, yeah, sometimes when, like, we know, where they're going to be out there barbecuing on, like, Thursday evenings, we're going to, like, close the windows for a specified amount of time.
[45:42.570 --> 45:45.330]  And then when they get done with their stuff, we're going to open things up.
[45:45.590 --> 46:00.450]  But I think if you ever have an opportunity, yeah, it's not just about the indoor air quality that you have, but if you're able to, like, complement that with what's going on outdoors and try and put both of those into conversation with one another, that puts you in a position to have,
[46:00.750 --> 46:08.490]  one, not just, like, a more holistic understanding of what's going on around you, but also being able to, like, think a little bit more about when you should ventilate and when you shouldn't.
[46:08.630 --> 46:13.350]  Because if the outdoor air is really bogus and bad, the last thing you want to do is going to want to crack the windows.
[46:13.990 --> 46:18.570]  Unfortunately, for a lot of people, that's kind of, like, the only scenario or situation they can find themselves in.
[46:20.070 --> 46:22.730]  But if that's not you, yeah, the ventilation process.
[46:24.830 --> 46:25.630]  Is she back here?
[46:25.890 --> 46:26.050]  Yeah.
[46:26.230 --> 46:29.190]  Did you have multiple sensors throughout the house?
[46:29.370 --> 46:38.570]  Or is there, like, a particular part of the house where you think it's more important to be tracking this kind of stuff, like the kitchen, maybe, or the room where you're sleeping?
[46:38.610 --> 46:39.190]  I don't know.
[46:39.190 --> 46:47.870]  Yeah, for this project, I worked with people and only had, or I'm sorry, so the question was about, did I have, like, multiple sensors and monitors in people's homes?
[46:47.970 --> 46:50.470]  For this project, each household only had one.
[46:50.790 --> 46:56.370]  And we placed it based on folks' curiosities and their own priorities around their own individual air quality, right?
[46:57.290 --> 47:07.750]  So one of the households had a school teacher who also just, like, did her own art projects, like her own, like, water paints and, like, oils and stuff like that.
[47:07.750 --> 47:12.830]  And so, like, her art space, we had, like, one of my particulate matter sensors to pick up what was going on.
[47:12.970 --> 47:17.430]  And we could, like, notice things whenever she was applying fixatives to, like, any of her, like, art.
[47:17.750 --> 47:22.230]  Other households, we had, like, in the bedroom with the smokers right there, which is where they had theirs.
[47:22.510 --> 47:28.130]  And so, for me, this project, and I'd also advocate it for anybody, thinking about where you'd like to...
[47:28.130 --> 47:32.730]  where your own priorities and curiosities lay, because that's something that I feel like I've come across.
[47:33.190 --> 47:39.350]  Everybody kind of, like, has their own curiosities about a particular room that they don't spend a lot of time in and stuff like that.
[47:39.690 --> 47:42.310]  I'd say building and, like, placing one sensor there.
[47:42.690 --> 47:50.330]  In my own house, I have a few of my own things that I've made, just kind of so I can, like, try and get a better understanding of how things are changing over the course of the space.
[47:51.870 --> 47:54.650]  And I'm sorry, I think I cut you off in the back with the red.
[47:55.550 --> 47:59.310]  So, outside of individual action, what do you do with this data?
[47:59.550 --> 48:00.890]  Do you take the city hall?
[48:01.230 --> 48:08.050]  Could you combine this with, I don't know, the more bicycle infrastructure, advocating for stuff like that?
[48:08.510 --> 48:12.890]  What would you do with it, outside of just, you know, for your own gratification?
[48:13.770 --> 48:15.230]  Me, personally, or in general?
[48:15.610 --> 48:18.690]  Because the answer for, yeah, the question is, what would you do with this type of data?
[48:19.570 --> 48:21.190]  I think you can do anything that you want.
[48:21.410 --> 48:34.970]  Again, and I don't mean that to be a cop-out, but if you can start to attach the qualitative associations with the data that's coming out at you, you can start to go about advocating for different things that you want to...
[48:34.970 --> 48:35.870]  Is this...
[48:36.550 --> 48:37.850]  Maybe it's time for one more.
[48:38.010 --> 48:38.650]  Okay, cool.
[48:38.770 --> 48:40.770]  No, I just wanted to... I just didn't want to keep going.
[48:41.150 --> 48:41.390]  Cool.
[48:41.890 --> 48:47.310]  Yeah, so I think for me, personally, the thing, the ultimate goal is to produce different types of data sets.
[48:47.310 --> 48:57.710]  When it comes to regulation, when it comes to different types of resources from government, oftentimes the only type of air quality data we have is going to be quantitative, but I think the qualitative stuff is important, right?
[48:58.030 --> 49:12.510]  So, when I mentioned the Consumer Reports reporting a little bit earlier, one of the products of reporting like that, by adding different types of, like, very specific neighborhood associations and people's qualitative experiences of having Amazon trucks on their streets all day,
[49:12.670 --> 49:19.210]  every day, is they can start to promote different types of definitions of what, like, warehouse pollution is.
[49:19.310 --> 49:29.490]  Because the way we're usually thinking about warehouse pollution is actually, like, the edifice itself in the warehouse and not really thinking about the truck traffic that's leaving and actually dropping packages off.
[49:29.610 --> 49:45.990]  But I think that's something I've seen a little bit more in environmental justice circles, is actually trying to, like, combine the impact of the transmission of, like, the transport of goods and associate that with the warehouse in and of itself and started having a more expansive definition of what's going on when it comes to warehouse pollution.
[49:49.490 --> 49:51.310]  Todd's going to be hanging around for a bit, right?
[49:51.530 --> 49:51.590]  Yeah.
[49:51.690 --> 49:54.470]  To wrap, to follow up with some questions you all have.
[49:54.710 --> 49:55.370]  Thanks for coming.
[49:55.630 --> 49:56.050]  Thanks, y'all.