{"id":5685,"date":"2024-07-22T19:43:56","date_gmt":"2024-07-22T11:43:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/?p=5685"},"modified":"2024-07-22T19:43:58","modified_gmt":"2024-07-22T11:43:58","slug":"does-closing-the-windows-starve-us-of-oxygen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/blog\/does-closing-the-windows-starve-us-of-oxygen\/","title":{"rendered":"Does Closing the Room Door Starve Us of Oxygen?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Air purifiers work best in a closed room environment, but this makes some people worry that closing windows starves us of oxygen. Worried about <\/span>how long you can survive in an airtight room? Well, recent tests in a real apartment \u2014 with as many as seven people in a small room \u2014 show less than a 1% change in oxygen levels in a closed room.<\/span> <\/p>\n\n\n

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\"the<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

How Much Oxygen is in the Air?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Oxygen is about 20% of air, while carbon dioxide is only 0.038% of air. Thus, carbon dioxide is capable of tripling from such a small number, while oxygen is mostly unchanged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fears of Closing Windows and Low Oxygen<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Fears of low oxygen levels are easy to find. For example, the question-answer site Quora asks whether running an air conditioner in a <\/span>closed room leads to low levels of oxygen<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Does<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Playing on this belief, companies rushed in with products that fill this supposed void. For example, a popular air purifier called “AIROIN” claims to solve the oxygen problem by creating oxygen.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The logic of this fear is simple: The room is closed, and humans breathe in oxygen, so oxygen levels should decrease over time, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Closing Windows: The Oxygen Experiment<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Smart Air tested this question by tracking oxygen levels with an iBrid MX6. We used the Smart Air office as an extreme testing site because the humble Smart Air office has seven people packed into just 34.5m\u00b2<\/span> <\/span>room.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Oxygen<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

On top of that, the office windows and doors are sealed with insulation tape to prevent polluted air from getting in (the office has no central air system). We tracked oxygen levels throughout normal workdays, keeping the door shut except for when people left and came back from lunch at midday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How Long Can You Survive In An Airtight Room<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Even in these extreme conditions, oxygen levels showed almost no change. By the end of the day, oxygen levels had dropped by 0.3%.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"oxygen<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Most homes have far fewer people in them, and the doors and windows aren’t sealed up with insulation tape like ours are. So changes would be even smaller in most homes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Simply put, humans don\u2019t take in as much oxygen as we think we do. Based on oxygen alone, estimates are that the average person could <\/span>survive in a completely sealed, airtight room for 12 full days<\/a>! Running out of oxygen in a room is quite unlikely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Change Is In Carbon Dioxide<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

While oxygen levels are pretty much constant over the day, what does<\/strong> change is the amount of carbon dioxide in the air. We tracked CO2 levels using the Air Visual Node, which showed carbon dioxide more than tripling throughout the day.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Carbon<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

How Can Carbon Dioxide Triple When Oxygen Remains Unchanged?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

If humans breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide, how can one remain almost unchanged while the other skyrockets? The key is that regular air has a lot<\/strong> more oxygen than carbon dioxide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carbon Dioxide Can Be Harmful<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Although we don\u2019t have to worry about running out of oxygen, too much carbon dioxide can be harmful. The levels in the Smart Air office during the test (1,000-3,500PPM) can make <\/span>people feel drowsy<\/a>. These levels<\/span> may even <\/span>worsen people’s performance on cognitive tests<\/a>. In addition, high levels of CO2 can indicate poor ventilation. Poor ventilation increases the risk of virus spread<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Smart<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Read More: Dangers of High CO2 Levels<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three Simple Ways to Lower CO2 Levels<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

#1  Open your windows from time to time<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Opening the windows will let CO2 out, but it will also let air pollution in. However, it may be easy to fix. Our tests have found that strong purifiers like the Cannon<\/a> <\/span>and <\/span>Blasts<\/a> for example can <\/span>cut PM2.5 by 50% in just 10 minutes<\/a> after closing the windows.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Open<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

#2  Leave the windows open a tiny bit<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

If you have a strong purifier, open the windows by just a bit and leave it there. Our tests have found that <\/span>purifiers can still be effective even when the window is left open<\/a>. This is even easier with a super-powerful purifier like our Blast air purifier<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n

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#3  Get a place with a central air system<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Choose an office or apartment with a central air system that brings in outdoor air (and hopefully filters it!). If your apartment or office \u2013 like many offices in China \u2013 doesn\u2019t have a central air system, you can get an air exchange system installed<\/a>, but it is expensive.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"HVAC<\/figure><\/div>\n\n
Bottom Line<\/div>
Bottom Line<\/div>
\nIn indoor spaces, oxygen levels are not of much concern even though CO2 can be. So the next time you come across a marketing hype about purifiers that claim to create oxygen, you know you don’t quite need that. <\/div>
Smart Air<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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How I Protect Myself<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Smart Air is a certified B Corp committed to combating the myths big companies use to inflate the price of clean air.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Smart Air provides empirically backed<\/a>, no-nonsense purifiers and masks, that remove the same particles as the big companies for a fraction of the cost. Only corporations benefit when clean air is a luxury.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Check out the Sqair!<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n

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\"\"<\/figure><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Air purifiers work best in a closed room environment, but this makes some people worry that closing windows starves us of oxygen. Worried about how long you can survive in an airtight room? Well, recent tests in a real apartment \u2014 with as many as seven people in a small … <\/p>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1035,"featured_media":30426,"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":"11958,11621,18859,660,5597,4477","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[765,260,264],"tags":[555,355,295,547],"class_list":["post-5685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-co2","category-air-pollution-health-effects","category-indoor-air","tag-carbon-dioxide","tag-co2","tag-indoor-air-quality","tag-oxygen","resize-featured-image"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5685","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\/1035"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5685"}],"version-history":[{"count":33,"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5685\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32696,"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5685\/revisions\/32696"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartairfilters.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}