Germs and Smoke
October 28, 2020 update Part 16
Paul Herscu ND, MPH
Herscu Laboratory
Air purification from September, 2020 –April, 2021: Germs and Smoke
This is a follow-up to the post on this topic from September, but an urgent one for two reasons. First, there are fires raging in the west of the United States leading to smoke entering homes irritating the respiratory tract of many people. And as importantly we are in the midst of a second wave of viral activity which has not come close yet to peaking. I am not focusing here on mounting virus activity or on changing morbidity/mortality rates, but suffice to say, the second wave has arrived, on schedule, as we predicted earlier this year.
The overall topic of this post is mitigation. Sometimes we find ourselves in situations where the water we drink, the food we eat, or the air we take in is less than optimal and if possible we need to mitigate or modify our exposures so the possibly harmful impacts are minimized. I would like to focus on air quality today and how both smoke and viruses impact air quality.
Over the past many decades, I have been impressed by public health infrastructure and work accomplished in the USA and abroad developing processes that help many people and communities, those with means and those without. It is impressive to examine the ability for governments to intersect with NGOs and stakeholders in an ever-evolving partnership to offer health and safety quickly and efficiently.
And there are areas where we could do better and occasionally there are quick, easy, inexpensive do-it-yourself solutions for a challenging issue.
I describe here one such idea, born from current need: an economical, home-made, Box Fan - Air Filter System.
