Unfortunately, the fact is that most people are now spending something like 20 hours a day inside… there is no easy answer. I sometimes wonder how much the sterilization hypothesis is wrapped up in the effect of prolonged indoor air exposure.
I am happy many folks around where I live started to go out for their exercise during COVID but I hope they keep that outdoor habit after the pandemic is over.
That sleepyness is a factor in car crashes can also be observed with increased rates shortly after winter/summer time changes.
[1] https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/overview/crashes-b...
During low traffic, there may be one vehicle to keep track of, and few pedestrians or other bikes.
That safe environment is quickly turned into an enabler for more aggressive and careless riding though. For fun and for getting from A to B faster.
It might be more interesting to look at bicycle fatalities than fatal car crashes [1]. Looking at the time-of-day distribution, fully 50% of such fatalities happen between 3pm-midnight. 6-9am is a higher risk slot (12%), but I'd probably avoid biking during 8-9am regardless.
[1] https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/bicyc...
Sorry for the crappy source, but I'm short on time right now to find you a better one: https://laqm.defra.gov.uk/public-health/pm25.html
Just make sure you're masked when you clean or replace any of the filters.
Citation needed?
As far as I am aware unless you are building deep underground or have built your house on radon rich bedrock, or your house is entirely made of granite, this is absolutely not a concern for the average person.
If you are in doubt you can look up what is the expected radon exposure on the ground region where you live. Most people will have a higher radiation exposure from an arm x-ray than from ground leaking Radon.
from: https://www.ukradon.org/information/ukmaps
"Every building contains radon but the levels are usually low. The chances of a higher level depend on the type of ground. Public Health England has published a map showing where high levels are more likely."
getting a sensor at a reasonable price is tricky since Radon emits Alpha radiation - I managed to get one at around £300
I aspire to have zero particulates in my home air, it takes some doing. Much of the particles are of human/industrial origin anyway. Exhaust and tire particulate and various broken down human built materials. (and an overabundance of human pieces that fall off and collect in ways that wouldn't happen outside)
I also aspire to have a low CO2 PPM inside, this conflicts with the previous (i.e. it is difficult without intense forced air exchange with the outside to achieve CO2 levels less than twice outside levels.
But to the contrary, I do not use disinfectants ever except in very specific circumstances. I go out of my way to not buy products which make disinfectant claims.
I think human beings need to be out in nature, to regularly come into contact with living soil. Not just "nature" of curated footpaths and manicured, fertilized lawns and parks, but actually getting dirty outside where other organisms live. It's hard to do in cities, and growing up on a farm it still seems absurd to me that I have to aspire and do great organizing to find myself somewhere in a city where I am not standing on a surface that has been engineered by people. The closest I can get is usually the strips of grass along the sidewalks that act as nothing but dog toilets. (I love dogs, but city dogs offend me. They're animals, they want to be outside and not just tethered to you or for the occasional adventure to a park)
An somewhat gross anecdote:
Several weeks ago I got a cut on my foot from some shattered glass that developed into an odd looking infection with red stripes/blotches that I was on the edge of scheduling an appointment for a doctor. I happened to visit a local lake and dipped my toes in for a bit. The next day I was amazed, the redness which had been growing in intensity for a couple of weeks was just completely gone. Maybe it was a coincidence but I strongly believe that whatever was having a grand ol time eating my foot seems to have made a tasty meal for whatever cocktail of microorganisms were hanging out in that lake (I assume it was a fungal infection which was outcompeted by a restored microbiome seeded from the lake)
Particulates seem to be the easiest to remove -- much easier than VOC's and other gases.
My new furnace has a MERV 11 filter that I've been playing around with in recent days as we've had AQI close to 100.
I have an air quality monitor (that measures PM1, PM2.5 and PM10) in the house, within about 20 minutes of turning on the furnace blower, AQI of 70 inside the house drops down to less than 10, and 20 minutes after that, it's down in the low single digits.
I have a MERV 13 filter that I could put in the furnace, but I'm not sure I need it since the MERV 11 seems to handle it.
Certainly not professional level calibration, but shows that it's within the ballpark. Unfortunately I don't think there's an official EPA monitoring station within 10 miles so I can't really check it against a calibrated monitor.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3192198/
Playing in mud and with animals is probably beneficial, but unclean air isn’t.
A damp and mouldy environment is clearly not good, but I wouldn't want my home to be a sterile environment whichlimited opportunity to build immunity.
Once our children are past the age of 10 or so we will probably go back to running air filters all the time. But the early years are crucial for immune system development and lack of exposure to the natural environment in early years is likely to be one of the biggest reasons for the rise in allergic diseases.
Oh, and stop using gas appliances indoors.
If you get a particle meter you quickly learn that the biggest source of particulate isn't gas but cooking (and especially lightly burning) food. The slightest smell of smoke means your home is going to be like (insert terrible air quality city) for a few minutes to a few hours depending on filtration.
One of the worst sources of this is the fact that so few places have real vent fans above cooking surfaces (the sucking through the microwave business does essentially nothing).
Maybe people with gas stoves burn their food more because of the higher potential heat?
Still, I try to avoid any of it! I have an induction stove, but now do things like skin-on salmon in the air fryer because it produces basically no smoke, whereas it used to smoke my house out when I did it on the frypan. Requires a lot less supervision than to stop it burning in the pan too, which is nice (but perhaps I was always just doing it on too hot a pan)...
This claim doesn't really pass the smell test for me. My induction burner gets plenty hot really fast, much warmer than I could ever practically use while cooking, even. After a quick search I was not able to find any data supporting the claim either - the only data I was able to find seemed to support induction peaking out at significantly higher temperatures than gas.
Do you have any data on gas vs induction- max temperatures?
An induction burner will be limited to about 1.5 kW if it's a portable unit and maybe 2.5 kW on a built-in range.
A gas range will usually have a high rating of 15-20,000 BTU/h which works out to ~4.5-6 kW.
But thermal transfer efficiency is different, they both depend on the size of the pan, the material, shape, etc.
Stick a needle into a 3000F flame and it will be red hot in a second. A thin smallish pan can get super hot. You can't just have a "max temp" rating. However induction ranges will have some thermal protection for their insides.
If you spill something, the flames will also burn what you spilled.
High temps are needed for NOx production, so presumably electric stove tops aren't going to be generating NOx.
However, they cost a sizeable chunk more than the cheap shit you find in rentals. (In SV, that cheap shit is looking spiffy, but it's still cheap shit. If it says Frigidaire, you know it's not exactly high end)
FWIW I think every place I've lived in Australia has had a vented rangehood over the stove, but maybe that is just blind luck.
A typical kitchen had a stove and either an old-fashioned icebox or a fridge, and that was it.
Sounds like you will have excessive CO2 problem. Have you measured that?
This is a valid concern, here is a relevant peer-reviewed paper that models the impacts that interventions such as lock-downs, masking, and excessive sanitization may have in the context of the ongoing pandemic [1].
Quotes from [1]:
> Nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) have been employed to reduce the transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), yet these measures are already having similar effects on other directly transmitted, endemic diseases.
> we consider the implications of SARS-CoV-2 NPIs for two endemic infections circulating in the United States of America: respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and seasonal influenza
> Using laboratory surveillance data from 2020, we estimate that RSV transmission declined by at least 20% in the United States at the start of the NPI period.
> We simulate future trajectories of both RSV and influenza, using an epidemic model. As susceptibility increases over the NPI period, we find that substantial outbreaks of RSV may occur in future years, with peak outbreaks likely occurring in the winter of 2021–2022.
> Longer NPIs, in general, lead to larger future outbreaks although they may display complex interactions with baseline seasonality
The most important takeaway from this paper is that it will be critical to prepare for this phenomenon to prevent the over-utilization of healthcare facilities across the globe. Personally I don't see how anyone could argue for longer and more intense NPIs if we begin to see this play out.
[1] The impact of COVID-19 nonpharmaceutical interventions on the future dynamics of endemic infections https://www.pnas.org/content/117/48/30547
Sometimes ppl are not just allergic to gluten, but the whole category of lectin(which is in every seed), they just don't react as strongly, but they're never really healthy and suffer from all kinds of ailments.
and then I travelled to another country with different kinds of pollen in the air and I wound up suffering from allergies there, how humiliating! so I thought, but really just humbling
looking up how to remedy it I found that one accepted train of thought now is that people are prone to develop allergies at any age, let alone being exposed to things different than where you grew up
so I would nip the over-sterilization argument right there. keep indoors clean, go outside.
When you traveled you got into contact with allergens that your body hadn't encountered before. If you had been in contact with those allergens when growing up then perhaps you wouldn't have had an allergic reaction?
>I found that one accepted train of thought now is that people are prone to develop allergies at any age
If you've never had soy before then how could you know whether you have a soy allergy or not?
I'm not trying to convince you either way. Just some holes in the argument.
I'm allergic to grass pollen myself. I have no idea how that squares with the argument, because I certainly never shied away from grass in the summer. But it's a fairly weak allergy.
Put in other terms, your body can overreact any time for any reason causing inflammation.
The rest I'm guessing is extrapolation from that - lack of early exposure = negative.
I grew up with a dog, and never tasted or smelled anything until a few years after the dog died
As an example, I was never exposed to cats early age but dogs yes. Now I have a mild reaction to cats hair and nothing with dogs. Of course this isn't a scientific study that can be validated but it does sort of make sense in my mind.
A la antibodies etc.
Allergies aren't a simple phenomenon.
You want ones with numbers, 99.97% is a good number to find, you can get it on big Honeywell filters.
While incredibly difficult to find, there are MPR 2800 rated furnace filters which are better than HEPA.
From that point of view, even a 90% catch rate sounds fine.
The takeaway is that less particle efficient filters won't ever get you down to the same steady state as better filters in real world applications.
And from personal experience with filters and devices to measure airborne particles, it is hard enough getting good numbers with the best filters I can find.
I shake out the pre-filter (gets covered in dust and pet dander) and toss out the filters every ~6 months. I use a filtrate 1900 filter for the home air filter.
Tip: never use the "ionic" button. They come on most filters for some bizarre reason, but ionically charging the air is a bad idea.
Why?
No it doesn’t. Who told you that? Ozone generators are a completely different thing and air ionizers must conform to low ozone emission standards.
> No it doesn’t.
Yes, it does.
> Who told you that?
Among others, the EPA [0].
> Ozone generators are a completely different thing
They are, but ionizing air cleaners still generate ozone even though they are different than “ozone generators”. [0, again]
> and air ionizers must conform to low ozone emission standards.
No, only the small minority that claim health benefits in a manner which brings them under FDA medical device regulatory authority do. [0, again.] But even those so regulated in ozone emissions are net ozone generators.
[0] https://www.epa.gov/indoor-air-quality-iaq/what-are-ionizers...
Here’s an outline on how to go from the common rating, CADR, to various parameters that are of interest:
People will talk about CADR but also look at TCO.
I still recommend just spending the 150 bucks on a Winex or Coway. Then you have true hepa, plus filters that last a year.
I suppose you also take no part in any activity that has any negative impact?
There is an indirect negative impact of ANY modern lifestyle. The really expensive impact comes from of industrialization and technological advancement.
Clearly you have a device to write this message, as well as power and internet connection. You might use AC or heating, you might rely on supply chains for food. Own any index funds? You own minuscule pieces of companies that produce cars, tobacco, or frack for oil. Your very existence is expensive for the earth and for society. Same applies for your kids if you have any.
Most drivers cannot practically manage walking/biking or public transit as their sole means of travel. Frankly that idea comes from a privileged and niche bubble perspective.
The four most impactful lifestyle choices you can make to reduce your effect on climate [1] are:
* have fewer children
* live car-free
* become vegetarian
* avoid transatlantic air travel
I now live car-free and vegan. I've no kids, yet (maybe never). I live in California but I'm from Ireland - I'll probably take a flight home soon.
So no, I don't totally avoid everything that can cause harm, but at least I try.
What is ludicrous is using a car for journeys under ten miles.
It is abhorrently selfish to do so knowing that your pollution contributes to sickness in people.
People should maybe take a pay cut, or live in a smaller home, closer to where they work. But instead they trade the health of others for their own standard of living. ("some of you may die, but that's a price I'm willing to pay")
> Most drivers cannot practically manage walking/biking or public transit as their sole means of travel.
In a large part because of cars. Cars beget cars. Car companies conspired to shut down public transit. Now people in those areas need a car. Then it's held as a example of why we need cars.
Urban sprawl was enabled by cars. Now people need cars to get to those areas.
It's very difficult to find a problem that cars solve that wasn't itself caused by cars.
What is ludicrous is to call how I actually live ludicrous. I enjoy a high standard of living. Without a car.
[1] https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541
Disclosure: my spouse is a migrant and we both fly to visit.
In the end, it is your choice with what you want to do. Things you're doing to contribute less like being car-free etc. are good, but I really find this extreme stance of "not having children for climate change" short-sighted.
Edit: typo
IMO this is short term thinking. What happens to the planet when you are gone? If all the like minded individuals who cared about the climate opt to not have kids, then those who inherit the earth will keep polluting.
Yeah those impoverished parents sure are pieces of shit for driving thier kids to school and commuting between multiple underpaid jobs. They should just take a pay cut and quadruple their commute time for the earth!
Let me paint it another way:
A vegan, car free, childless, software engineer in a big city has the carbon output of 100 Ugandan farmers.
Why do you get to use electronics, power, internet, and take occasional trips to Iceland while everyone else is morally bankrupt for having a vehicle?
The fact of the matter is: car use kills people through pollution. Minimizing car use kills fewer people. To use your car less is OFTEN an available choice.
Morally bankrupt would be someone arguing against reducing car use.
Only to wealthy privileged people who can discuss their first-world problems on forums like this. As folks get poorer on the scale the more a car becomes an unavoidable necessity for many.
I applaud to your personal choices and sacrifices, but please don't make it sound like everybody can and should make the same/similar ones.
Most of us here have/want kids. I say something very opposite to what you say - folks here, please have kids! Not many, but take your time and raise them properly. It basically means sacrificing large portion of your life to them, without a guarantee they will even appreciate it. Which is fine, that shouldn't be the motivation for it anyway.
You who are reading this, are a part of smart elite in this world, whenever you are, and can raise next generation of elite with disproportionally large amount of decisive powers in their hands.
Why, you may ask? Raise them well so they are balanced happy individual with clear drive to help make this world a better place, and they may very well become next leaders, business captains, politicians, or just good citizens helping those around them, environment, mankind.
Now imagine what kind of world would that kind of attitude bring. Don't just minimize your 'bad' footprint on this existence, try creating more of the positive one.
My neighbor has five to seven cars on their driveway. To let others out they start them all and play musical cars. Two of them drive to jobs less than two miles away. They use them for practically every trip over 200 metres. Their extended family visit every weekend, in separate cars and all live within five miles.
My other neighbors have three cars for two people, including a pickup truck. Again, they drive literally everywhere. Even walking distance.
Many of the young people here drive terrible modded cars up and down all day for no actual purpose than vanity.
If you tried to have to have a conversation with these people about their car use, they would claim it's their right and that they "pay for it". Yet what they pay is < 10% of the damage they cause.
Obviously, if you are remote, or have a disability or need to carry a heavy load you should probably use a car.
But many people think it's literally their God given right to drive a dangerous metal box, badly, burning irreplaceable oil, spraying pollution, noise pollution and brake dust literally straight into your home.
Every single car journal under 10 miles should be excessively taxed, with extreme taxes for trips under three miles. You should literally be forced to think twice, then twice again.
All of these people are literally saying: "Fuck other people's health, their sanity, their happiness, their time, their environment, the environment as a whole. Me drive metal box"
The entitlement of drivers is literally staggering.
If you tax three mile trips extremely enough, you turn a 4 mile roundtrip into around 15 miles of driving in a lot of cases. Need to go A to B to A which are 2 miles apart? Drive A to C (3.5 miles) to B (4 miles) to C (4 miles) to A (3.5 miles). Does that policy make sense in light of the obvious workaround?
Tax the fuel and you align the incentives much more closely and much more difficult to workaround in ways that work against your intention.
I'm living on countryside in Eastern Europe and by no metrics I'm anywhere near to being wealthly
You don't have to be wealthly to have privilege of not having to own car, it's often about job.
Majority of people I know needs their cars due to their jobs. Of course part of people I know actually enjoys driving and stuff.
WFH helps with it significantly, but even before I've been commuting by train due to it being cheap and allowing me to e.g read a book, sleep and generally have time for me
For things that are within e.g 10km radius like shops, services, then I tend to use bike (unless its winter ofc)
but I think it's hard to do it pernamently, at some point I think I may need to get one just in case.
In cities it may be easier cuz you can always call Uber/Taxi
______________
> As folks get poorer on the scale the more a car becomes an unavoidable necessity for many.
Sometimes I believe that car is what actually keeps people poor
When I look at friends they spend significant amount of their salary on car - insurance, fuel, maintenance - it ranges between like 3k PLN to 10k PLN where minimal wage is around 2K
So if you have to pay 4K per year for your car when your year salary is 24K
then shit's no cheap and I think we're optimistic here, but often it allows you to have job, so it's terrible situation.
The purpose here is probably not to be a “better person” but to inflate their ego while belittling others.
What does it accomplish to shame drivers while simultaneously using AC and running water in the California desert?
If it were conversation about activism, I can talk about my engagement with the city council and contributions to relevant charities.
If this were a conversation about energy use in California I could talk about the premium I pay on my electricity so it is from renewable sources.
https://www.smud.org/en/Going-Green/Get-Green-Energy/Residen...
Reducing car usage is, in that journal article I referenced, the number 2 thing you can do to reduce your climate impact.
I have not misrepresented anything.
You’re right about the water. That’s something I’m still learning about.
Most car journeys are under 5 miles. Imagine the benefit if the majority of these journeys were made by bicycle instead! Public health from less air pollution and more exercise. Less stress, less traffic, less potential for vehicle accidents. Governments might even decide to improve pedestrian/cycling/public transit infrastructure and turn car parks into people parks with green spaces (which would reduce absorption of solar radiation and cool your city and clean its air).
It's a really simple proposal with many obvious benefits and no clear downside whatsoever. And just because it isn't a silver bullet you are all up in arms against it? Tell us more how BrianHenryIE is the actual source of the problem here and how you should still drive everywhere because of his equivalence to 100 farmers...
OP isn’t just suggesting that people drive less. According to him, drivers are “abhorrently selfish” and are directly responsible for death, disease, and need to take pay cuts and live in smaller homes so they can more easily fit into his little box that defines a good person.
I’m not up in arms about the idea of biking. I’m up in arms about people with extremely carbon expensive lifestyles claiming that everyone else is reprehensible for engaging in $specific_activity.
I've encountered this sentiment many times here. It's a bit baffling to me, to be honest. Yes, we all know that personal actions are small compared to massive structural changes. But why exactly do you think that it's one or the other? I'd wager that the majority of politically active people trying to change things at a high level are also changing smaller things in their day-to-day life, because it's an issue that they are passionate about.
In my opinion, the attitude that you promote ("why do the little actions when only the big ones matter") is more likely to cause inaction, and the people I've met who espouse that viewpoint say a lot and do nothing at all.
Sure people should make those lifestyle changes where possible! I’m not against small change.
I get frustrated when I see people generalize the rest of the population as “abhorrently selfish”. Especially when their own lifestyle comes from a position of excess and privilege.
To clarify my position:
If you wanna make lifestyle changes for the environment, more power to you! I’ve got no beef with that. Just don’t use those tiny aspects of your modern life to paint the rest of the world as immoral.
citation needed
seriously, it's got to be more like 1000 or 10,000 farmers.
Of course, there are many individual life circumstances that mean a car is an absolute necessity, but for many people it's a choice, whether they acknowledge they've made that choice or not. This is especially true for people who are more affluent.
Complaining about that (and in that tone) helps nobody.
We can disagree about climate change and the rest of it, but the results of a sedentary lifestyle can't be ignored. There's also no room for indignation at an imagined holier-than-thou position when you take this approach.
I've found this simple, obvious observation about obesity especially interesting in regards to the current public health scare and the rise of the bio-security state.
edit: \/ didn't know thanks, did a quick search - https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1129809_tire-dust-is-po... is something like this available? Also it won't help as I am a person that needs a truck. I transport shit all the time. I'm constantly trucking stuff - I'm not one of those show-offs that own a truck just because.
Just nobody is putting money into it.
A good chunk of wear can be eliminated by ensuring tyres never skid by having per wheel torque control, which future 4-motor EV's will have 'for free'.
Criticizing cars is fine, but "state-subsidized" is just superfluous there. This is not somehow unique to cars.
This is by choice and can be changed.
But the fact remains that America has many low-density areas that will never be affordably served by transit. That's not just in this country, Europe has areas that aren't well served by transit, even Japan has areas that aren't well served by transit.
I really don't think we're up to the challenge of really stopping (or significantly slowing) climate change (if it's possible at all now) and will end up spending much more money (and discomfort) mitigating the more severe effects of climate change than if we'd just started making changes a decade or more ago.
"'London throat': Toxic brake dust could cause condition, scientists say" [1]
"Pollution from car tires is killing off salmon on US west coast, study finds" [2]
[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-51049326
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/03/coho-sal...
Then secondary problems such as sedentary lifestyles and children unable to play on their street because of the dominance of cars (car numbers increased almost 3x in Ireland since 1990, when I was a kid).
There are more reasons cars are bad for society and bad for the individual – loss of communities dues to freeways [3]; loss of sense of community due to people not walking around and meeting their neighbours [4]; a ticket price to society when a car is deemed a requirement just to work and shop [5]; the 1.35 million people who die in road traffic accidents each year [6].
[3] https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/sta...
[4] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/jul/16/cars-are-fue...
[5] https://www.tampabay.com/news/florida-politics/2021/03/21/fl...
Vastly reducing the amount of brake dust that is given off the vehicle in comparison to combustion vehicles. The same way in which riding a bicycle produced brake dust but not in the same volumes are combustion cars.
Car tires I completely agree however almost anything that rolls uses rubber and as such if we introduced more bicycles instead of cars we would also be polluting the streets with rubber. You could argue however that this is offset by the health benefits this would provide people rather than being sedentary in a car.
With regards to communities I would argue that nothing is stopping people from walking around and meeting their neighbours. However, people can visit other communities or extend their community boundary using cars and railways etc. Therefore our sense of community isn't just those immediately, but those across town as well.
I've been curious about this topic for a while: what contributes more pollution per mile traveled -- an internal combustion engine or a Tesla charged with power from a coal/gas/wind/nuclear plant. If anyone encountered an analysis like that, please link!
I went nearly insane when this constant humming sound started to appear inside my apartment seemingly coming from several directions. It would start at the oddest times and then go out again after a while, making you think it's over, only to start again after a minute. I wasn't able to focus on work or reading anymore, I was starting to get really irritated and aggressive. Even with active noise-canceling headphones I could feel the bass sound. It took me the six weeks to pinpoint the origin of the sound to my upstairs neighbors, who eventually admitted that they had bought an air purifier because of allergies and kept it running all day long and through the night. If you recommend it to friends please let them know that the bass sound and the vibration translates through walls and might make a helpless neighbor's life miserable.
Smaller invisible particles, for example pollution or pollen, hang in the air and move with the circulation, so they will eventually be caught as air passes through the filter.
The amount of these particles could be reduced by cleaning the air at the "intake" of the house. If there is intake air passing through pipes, these pipes need to be kept clean. If the house is set up such that air moves in both direction through passages, the whole thing is fucked and need to be fixed. Even detecting where intake air is entering the house can be really difficult.
Because of indoor temperature and outdoor wind, a house functions like a pump that sucks in outdoor air, heats it, and ejects it. Intake air may be sucked from any crack in the walls, floors and foundation, where it picks up dust and mould. Equipping the house with an intake fan (and filter) will pressurize it and prevent this "sucking".
Another thing I saw very recently is ventilation standards for buildings have been reduced by 75% over the last 70 years.
This is terribly inconvenient, because droplets are easy to control, but aerosols are not.
Pretty sure when returning to the office post-covid we'll see some discussion on Meeting room CO2 levels. I occasionally had a hard time keeping my eyes open in crowded meeting rooms which never happens even in the most boring meetings that I have remotely.
I have the robot vacuum still doing its thing every other day but at least once a week I do a deep clean and it removes a ton of dust.
I also have a HEPA filter air purifier going 24 hours.
Carpets are the worst.
It has been great so far. The bags are a little expensive, but worth it. It is quiet and pleasant to use and has strong suction, and parts are available if we need them.
I am wary of taking 7 year old advice in general, given how quickly things change and how companies put out new products each year, but I hope you like your vacuum. I paid $215 USD for my vacuum new with a 5 year warranty - there's very little a tech could do on this vacuum that wouldn't cost more than a new vacuum.
The high cost was hard to get over, but I waited for a sale and now I only wish I had done it sooner.
This won't be an option in some urban environments, but those are simply bad for the health of children (and adults).
A daily changeover seems much worse than constant exchange, and both of those pale in comparison to filtering.
I like to tell new parents a trick that worked well for us: use a nice filter-based air purifier for white noise. It has deep bass, and it keeps the air near the child extremely clean. We have been doing this for our kids for almost 10 years now since birth.
A fun experiment for kids: if you have a laser pointer, shine it close to the ground indoors and kick up dust near the floor. If you see any light in the air, that is all stuff you are breathing in (works really well on carpet)…
Air quality associated with:
Alzheimers: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-new-alzheimer...
Cancers, plural: https://www.aacr.org/patients-caregivers/progress-against-ca...
Sperm Quality: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4443398/#sec995...
Female Fertility: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2207560-exposure-to-air...
Autism: https://www.sciencealert.com/particulate-matter-in-air-pollu...
Bipolar/Depression: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/air-p...