The Problem
Evans Pure Air, Inc
“On 12 November 2014, the World Health Organization (WHO) set new benchmarks to reduce health damage from indoor pollution.”1 And while our initial efforts will not be able to address the worst of these conditions, we will work to reduce disease and death among 1 billion middle class women and children worldwide exposed to hazardously poor air quality in their homes.
Additionally, as reported by Richard Saint Cyr, M.D. in Beijing:
First, (and most importantly) there actually is almost no such thing in the real world as a safe level of air pollution. Even with an extraordinarily low PM2.5 under 7 µg/m3 (AQI 30), the data shows an uptick in deaths, cancers and heart disease. As the WHO states in their 2005 WHO Air Quality Guidelines Global Update (see footnotes for PM2.5, PM10 and AQI definitions):
The risk for various outcomes has been shown to increase with exposure (to poor air quality) and there is little evidence to suggest a threshold below which no adverse health effects would be anticipated. In fact, the low end of the range of concentrations at which adverse health effects has been demonstrated is not greatly above the background concentration, which for particles smaller than 2.5 μm (PM2.5) has been estimated to be 3–5 μg/m3 in both the United States and western Europe.
The WHO updated this guideline in 2013, and with eight more years of research they are even stronger in their assertions:
Thresholds: For short-term exposure studies, there is substantial evidence on associations observed down to very low levels of PM2.5. The data clearly suggest the absence of a threshold below which no one would be affected. Likewise long-term studies give no evidence of a threshold. Some recent studies have reported effects on mortality at concentrations below an annual average of PM2.5 and 10 µg/m3
The WHO Guidelines for Indoor Air Quality explain why their indoor air and outdoor air recommendations are the same:
. . . there is no convincing evidence of a difference in the hazardous nature of particulate matter from indoor sources as compared with those from outdoors and that the indoor levels of PM10 and PM2.5, in the presence of indoor sources of PM, are usually higher than the outdoor PM levels. Therefore, the air quality guidelines for particulate matter recommended by the 2005 global update are also applicable to indoor space . . .
Much of their research is based on a couple of famous, very large cohort studies involving hundreds of thousands of people, including the Harvard Six Cities Study and the American Cancer Society Cancer Prevention II Study. These studies show clear increases in death rates from all causes, as well as from heart disease and lung cancers, as air pollution rises. (It’s important to note that all of the data points in these studies, from dozens of cities, had a PM2.5 range from 10 to a maximum of 30 — far lower than most cities in developing countries across Asia now.) All make it very clear that after ~7 ug/m3, the adverse health effects increase.
“Millions of people die each year as a result of household air pollution; 34% are due to stroke, 26% to ischemic heart disease, 22% to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, 12% to childhood pneumonia and 6% to lung cancer.” “These diseases are primarily caused by high levels of fine particulate matter and carbon monoxide released by the burning of solid fuels such as wood, coal . . . “
And while the first one-third of our customers are not exposed to these hazardous levels of air pollution in most cases, the Chinese citizen in Beijing and other urban areas across the developing world have the same problem in their current environment and will have for the next 2 decades or more. ‘Fine particulate matter is a complex mixture of solid and liquid particles consisting mainly of sulfate, nitrates, ammonia, sodium chloride, black carbon mineral dust and water. The(se) WHO guidelines were informed by a rigorous review of all currently available scientific knowledge and were peer-reviewed by scientist around the world.”