The Air Inside when Smoke is Outside- Wildfires & Air Quality with Dr. Elliott Gall

This podcast is airing while catastrophic wildfires are raging over the entire West Coast, and many of us have been living in air quality that is beyond the air toxics index. I have never thought so much about my HVAC system and the trade-offs of protecting my home from external particulate matter and needing to ventilate my home. As a lung doctor, it is hard not to think about how much our buildings need to breathe just like we do. One person who makes it his job to study these things is Dr. Elliott Gall, a scientist in the department of mechanical and materials engineering at Portland State University. He obtained his PhD in Civil Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. He studies indoor air quality, including HVAC systems and understanding how air pollution enters and leaves our homes and other buildings where we live our lives.

Listen to our conversation today- we cover so many questions, including how to pick and size air filters, pitfalls to avoid, what we can and cannot protect ourselves from with technology, the differences among air quality monitors, etc. 

We also address some memes and pseudoscience flying around the Internet and social media, from dangerous ozone-generating air "purifiers" to the rumor that boiling water will clean the air. He actually did some experiments on this today before this podcast to answer the question!

Overall, it is hard to not think about the magnitude of the cost of these fires, not only in the toll on human life and property that has already occurred, particularly for those who have lost loved ones and all their possessions directly due to fire, but also in the healthcare expenditures, decreased human potential, lifelong illnesses and economic devastation from those affected by the smoke itself as well as the costs that all of us will have to lay out to prepare our own homes for decreasing air pollution exposure. It has never been so clear to me that healthy air leads to healthy people and a healthy economy.

Resources-

Follow Dr. Gall on Twitter at @etgall.

He sent me so many great references, they actually don't fit in the show-notes! Go to the airhealthourhealth.org post for this episode to see them. I'll keep updating it as I get more. 

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Visit episode post for more information and references, or go to airhealthourhealth.org.

Follow and comment on Facebook page and Instagram. Record a question or comment on the Anchor podcast site or contact me via the website.

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