Keeping an eye on CO2 is really interesting. I recently moved from an apartment with an electric range to one with a gas range, and CO2 gets as high as 3000ppm when I'm cooking (compared to a baseline of around 700 or 800). I don't know what the effects of this are, but the monitor reminds me to ventilate during and after cooking.

(I have my Airthings monitor bridged to HomeKit with Home Assistant and it seems severe enough for Apple to send a notification to my phone about it, by default. So I open windows and am happy to be able to notice air quality issues that most people will miss. I did turn off the notification though, I know I'm cooking ;)

Are you sure you have a CO2 monitor and not an eCO2 monitor?

A lot of cheaper CO2 sensors really detect VOCs and try to estimate CO2 from that.

I have this: https://www.airthings.com/view-plus

It ain't cheap.

Well price is no guarantee. Try the hand sanitiser test I detailed above.

The CO2 sensor in the View Plus id advertised as follows:

NDIR Sensor (Non-Dispersive Infra-Red): Measurement range 400–5000 ppm Optimum Accuracy ±50ppm ±3% within 10 – 35°C / 50 - 95°F and 0 – 80%RH after initial calibration time

Can you tell from that description whether it's a true CO2 sensor?

That's proper CO2 sensor then. The cheap ones are estimating CO2 levels from VOC levels.

Second this. It's possible that the 3000 reading is triggered by something else. They should try rubbing sanitiser on their hands and then holding the device - if it goes crazy then it's not directly sensing CO2.

I sort of did this test last night. I assume that VOCs include ethanol, so I mixed up some drinks near the monitor. VOCs went from ~60ppb to a peak of 579ppb. CO2 remained constant at about 640ppm.

I am less surprised than other people that making an open fire indoors increases CO2 levels. Where do the combustion byproducts go if not into the air.

Do you have a rangehood fan that vents outside?

You should never cook without one, even electric, but especially with gas.

If you do have one sounds like it isn’t working very well. Maybe not enough make up air coming in, it’s blocked? Not sure.

I don't think my fan vents outside, but I haven't really tested it extensively. I haven't ever seen an apartment in NYC whose range fan vents outside, but maybe I've just been unlucky.

> You should never cook without one

It's probably one of the least important thing you can act on in your day to day life when it comes to health tbh

Would you entertain the idea of stressing about CO2 levels being more harmful than elevated CO2?

Hear, hear.

Humans really are sheeple.

No.

Fair enough

To be fair, I think the fear of cognitive effects of increased CO2 concentration is overblown: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32557862/

So some perspective;

    * 10,000 years ago, the average atmospheric CO2 was about 280ppm.
    * In 2022, the average atmospheric CO2 was about 420ppm.
    * OPs baseline indoor CO2 is 700-800ppm.
    * For a brief time when cooking, OPs indoor CO2 is 3000ppm

700-3000ppm CO2 would be catastrophic for the climate if it was the average atmospheric level (but fortunately we haven't messed up this bad yet)

But when it comes to the effect on the body, and I am not a medical professional of any kind, but normally exhaled air contains about 4.5 percent CO2 ( or 45,000ppm), so while breathing in air with 3,000ppm or 0.3% CO2 probably isn't optimal for us - our lungs are constantly dealing with much higher concentrations. So nervous shallow-breathing worrying about CO2 levels of your home probably has a similar effect to OPs cooking. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Levels above 1000ppm are shown to cause cognitive impairment. 3000ppm is absolutely harmful.

>our lungs are constantly dealing with much higher concentrations

After gas exchange. Not with inhaled air.

>After gas exchange. Not with inhaled air.

gas exchange is continuous, not a discrete event that only takes place just after fresh air enters the lungs.

Sitting next to someone exhaling 45,000 ppm air and breathing in, if you breathe in perhaps 5% of what they breathe out, you are still breathing in air at 2,400 ppm...

Is sitting next to someone bad for health?

It's very hard to disassociate everything from placebo effects, and I had a CO2 monitor in my bedroom plugged in for a while.

It trained me to open windows to create circulation, but unfortunately some of the reduced airflow was unsolvable short of me like... installing more ventilation into my room.

I am glad I am aware of CO2 stuff (and definitely feel like I've reduced headaches and the like from being more mindful) but sometimes you will be informed of a bad CO2 environment but be totally incapable of doing anything about it and that really sucks.

There are some pretty cool newish ventilation products that are minimally invasive (e.g. don't have to run need ducts). Lunos makes a tiny ductless HRV that can provide indoor/outdoor air exchange. There are other products, too. https://www.buildwithrise.com/stories/ductless-heat-recovery lists several.

What I'm thinking of is more two places:

- an office (fortunately not my case)

- rented apartment that would not let me drill a hole in the wall

Good info to have though! I feel like I would definitely look at setting that up in most cases

Don’t assume when someone brings up a health hyperoptimization they’re stressing out about it.

In fact, lots of people who do these sorts of things actually enjoy what amounts to a health hobby, in the same way any other hobbyist likes to geek out about their respective hobby.

Stressing out about minutiae of your own health is, in most cases, wasted effort.

However, putting that effort into fixing those small things for millions of people usually is worth it. For example, could OP contact their local building standards department and push for CO2 monitors in all new buildings? Could they do a study and publish the results to give a better scientific backing for any changes? Could they publish designs for a combined smoke and CO2 alarm?

If they are truly powerless to do anything like that, then they should just ignore the whole thing and worry about more day to day risks, like slipping on ice on their front yard.

But you're missing my point: why assume it's "stressing out"?