{"id":4491,"date":"2017-05-24T14:26:28","date_gmt":"2017-05-24T06:26:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/?p=4491"},"modified":"2022-07-27T13:49:03","modified_gmt":"2022-07-27T05:49:03","slug":"pollution-breathe-every-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/blog\/pollution-breathe-every-day\/","title":{"rendered":"How Much Pollution Do We Breathe Every Day?"},"content":{"rendered":"

How much pollution do we actually breathe in every day? Are masks or air purifiers more benefiting to our health? Do we really need both? The answer to this comes down to how and where we are spending most of our time every day. <\/span><\/p>\n

There are two possible theories: masks might seem more effective since when you\u2019re outside, where <\/span>PM2.5 levels are generally higher than indoors <\/a>(almost double in the places we tested). On the other hand, we spend most of our time indoors, so maybe an air purifier is more important?<\/span><\/p>\n

To find the answer to this, I looked into how much dirty air we\u2019re breathing every day.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Where Do We Hang Out?<\/h3>\n

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, here\u2019s how an average working person aged between 25-45 split their day between the 4 most-visited places:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

(“Out and about” means places like restaurants, cinema, and gyms) Find out more here.<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Now that looks a lot like my day. I spend most of my time in the office or at home sleeping (don\u2019t call me lazy!)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Most of us can\u2019t control the air we breathe when we\u2019re out in restaurants, bars or the gym, but we have more control over the air we breathe in our home, outside, and hopefully in our office (that is, if you\u2019re lucky enough to have an office like Smart Air!).<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

In total, we spend 80% of our time in these 3 places which means we can control 80% of the air we breathe, that’s not bad.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Counting the Particles<\/h3>\n

The next question is: if we didn\u2019t have masks or purifiers, how much pollution would we be breathing in these four places?<\/p>\n

First, we need an average value for the PM2.5 concentration where we are. Choosing <\/span>Beijing, in 2016, the average PM2.5 was 72 micrograms per cubic meter<\/a>. When we\u2019re outside we get the full whack of this pollution, but when we\u2019re inside we only get about half the dose.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

Armed with this, and knowing that we breathe between 4.5-42.5L of air per minute (depending on the activity we\u2019re doing)<\/a> we can work out how many PM2.5 particles we breathe in one day…<\/p>\n

<\/h3>\n

The Total: 220,000,000 Particles!<\/h3>\n

Wow, we\u2019re breathing around 220 million tiny PM2.5 particles every day, or just over 2,500 per second. Looking at their weight, in one day we\u2019re breathing 622 micrograms of PM2.5!<\/p>\n

Now, micrograms are tiny. So that\u2019s about the equivalent of 1\/20th of a grain of rice. Or in other words: we\u2019re breathing a grain of rice\u2019s worth of PM2.5 pollution every three weeks.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

It might not sound like much, but since these particles are 20 times smaller than the width of a human hair, that\u2019s still a lot! And these particles include toxic junk like coal and arsenic.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Where Are We Breathing These Particles?<\/h3>\n

We can split this number up into the four different places where we spend most of our day to see where we\u2019re breathing the most pollution.<\/p>\n

Here are the factors we take into consideration when calculating this:<\/p>\n

\u00b7  Length of time we spend in each place<\/p>\n

\u00b7  Amount of air we breathe per minute in each place<\/p>\n

\u00b7  PM2.5 concentration in each place<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

From that pie chart, there are some obvious things to point out.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Crazy Fact #1<\/h3>\n

Even though we spend most of our time at home, it\u2019s not when we breathe in the most PM2.5. <\/span>Research has found we breathe almost six times more air when we\u2019re walking than when we\u2019re sleeping<\/a>. So that means when we\u2019re at home and sleeping, we\u2019re breathing in less pollution as well!<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Crazy Fact #2<\/h3>\n

Crazy fact #1 being said, it means that even though we\u2019re only outside for short periods of time, we\u2019re actually breathing more! Coupled with the fact that there is more pollution outside<\/a>, we\u2019re breathing almost a third of our daily pollution outside (31% from the pie chart).<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Bottom Line<\/div>
Bottom Line: How to Protect Us from Air Pollution?<\/div>
<\/p>\n

For home and office, where we spend over 90% of our day, we\u2019d be reducing daily intake of PM2.5 by 60% by installing purifiers.<\/span><\/p>\n

For outdoors, by simply buying a 4RMB mask<\/a>, we\u2019re able to lower our daily intake of PM2.5 by almost a third. <\/span><\/div>

Smart Air<\/div><\/div>\n

Put simply, for the places where we\u2019re breathing harder (outside) or the places we\u2019re breathing for longer periods of time (the office and at home) we need to make sure we protect ourselves (turns out that\u2019s everywhere).<\/span><\/p>\n

If you\u2019re someone who thinks masks aren\u2019t useful or are too uncomfortable \u2013 they\u2019re definitely needed! And if you\u2019re someone who already wears a mask but thinks you\u2019re safe from PM2.5 inside your home \u2013 you\u2019re not!<\/span><\/p>\n

Breathe safe!<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How much pollution do we actually breathe in every day? Are masks or air purifiers more benefiting to our health? Do we really need both? The answer to this comes down to how and where we are spending most of our time every day.  There are two possible theories: masks might … <\/p>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2295,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[247,225,331],"class_list":["post-4491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-air-pollution","tag-breathe","tag-health","tag-indoor-air"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2295"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4491"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4491\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23213,"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4491\/revisions\/23213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}