alt Hacker NewsLiving very close to busy highways is known to generate poor air quality. I recommend anyone in those locations buy an air purifier for their kids' rooms.
I bought a couple reasonably priced HEPA purifiers and I change the filters on schedule. Replacement HEPA filters are very cheap.
Also watch out for things that we do indoors that can generate bad air quality. I had a friend who bought a VOC meter and noticed very high readings in his kid's room. He traced the source to his chemical and paint cabinet nearby, which he never considered because he couldn't smell anything. Throwing out a lot of the old containers dropped the measurements to the unmeasurable range.
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If you’re so inclined, you can build your own air purifier with laser cut panels or 3d printed panels and use a cheap ikea air filter and standard PC fans. All the parts are readily available, and user repairable.
If you pair if with an Apollo AIR-1 you can have home assistant ramp up and down the fans with a PC fan controller based on live readings of PM2.5 in your home. I did this with the help of Claude code.
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6826527
https://makerworld.com/en/models/2470181-nukit-tempest-euro-...
what a nice externality example "I recommend anyone in those locations buy an air purifier for their kids' rooms"
I drive the car, you buy the purifier.
It's a good start, but for VOCs and gases you'll need activated carbon. Those 2-in-1 filters do exist but cost more. And many are scams because they don't have enough volume of activated carbon.
Agreed, just buy air purifiers with HEPA filters and change them regularly. The main expense is buying one for every room, but it's one of those expenses you wish you had made sooner.
DHH is also a fan (pun not intended?): https://world.hey.com/dhh/air-purifiers-are-a-simple-answer-...
Also he had the kid switch to smoking filtereds
HEPA filters are counterproductive in standard air purifiers. Air purifiers pump their cleaned air directly into the dirty air of the room. It doesn't matter if that cleaned air is extremely clean, because it's immediately mixed with dirty air. What actually matters is how much clean air you produce: the "clean air delivery rate" (CADR).
The more effective the filter the more it restricts airflow. If a filter is only 99% effective instead of 99.99% but allows double the airflow, it provides nearly double the CADR. To benefit from HEPA you need a clean side and dirty side, like in a clean-room setup.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_air_delivery_rate