Indoor CO2 could cut our capacity for complex, strategic thinking: study

https://news.yahoo.com/carbon-dioxide-homes-offices-classrooms-131700552.html

by belltaco • 7 years ago

69 54 7 years ago

news.yahoo.com

So Karnauskas worked with a mechanical engineer and a cognitive neuroscientist to make back-of-the-envelope calculations based on the Harvard findings and projections about rising carbon-dioxide emissions.
They created a model of a classroom full of elementary school children, with the appropriate breathing rates and room ventilation. (Karnauskas said the results would be similar for any group of people.) Then they looked at what would happen in two potential emissions scenarios projected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The results showed that in a business-as-usual scenario, in which carbon emissions continue to rise, humans would score 50% lower on measures of complex cognitive ability by 2100. For more basic cognitive measures, performance would drop about 25%.

Not exactly a rigorous model.

Edit: Which doesn't mean there isn't a problem, but this sort of article doesn't seem helpful to me.

MertsA• 7 years ago

Yeah I really don't get how we're supposed to interpret "50% lower". Intelligence is barely ordinal to begin with. Also ventilation when done properly isn't just some fixed rate, we already target air changes per hour and CO2 levels to prevent indoor air in an office environment from becoming too stagnant. This just means we would need to increase the ventilation, not that it wouldn't work at all.

simonh• 7 years ago

Well, 50% lower as measured by scores in the tests they used. And yes of course this might be mitigated by better ventilation, but you have to know or suspect there’s a problem first in order to effectively mitigate it. The fact that an effect can be countered isn’t a valid criticism of a study showing an effect.

So I do agree with the critical comments, to the extent that this isn’t enough proof and we need better studies, but the theory seems credible and worth further study. But the dismissive attitude makes no sense to me, and if increased CO2 levels do have a proven effect on cognition, and CO2 levels are actually on track to rise to levels with a significant effect, that’s a really big deal.

missosoup• 7 years ago

we already target air changes per hour and CO2 levels to prevent indoor air in an office environment from becoming too stagnant

If you ever take a Co2 sensor into a standard office environment or even your home, you're in for a bit of a shock.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/08/indoor-c...

u320• 7 years ago

RCP8.5 strikes again...

dan-robertson2• 7 years ago

Big clever complicated models are important and useful of course but I think this sort of back-of-the-envelope calculation is important too. They can give a clue that a model isn’t massively wrong which is useful when developing a model and when replying to a complaint like “this model is so big and complicated that no one could have any confidence in its predictions.” It’s also something useful in directing further research.

I guess the point of the article is to say “here’s an implication of climate change that you possibly hadn’t thought/heard about.”

I know I’m inclined to think this is a serious issue and the effect of present indoor/city/outdoor CO2 levels on cognition is something I was concerned about anyway. CO2 levels outdoors are already 1/3 higher than 100 years ago and something like double the level of 10,000 years ago. And people spend more times indoors in better-sealed houses and denser offices.

vanusa2• 7 years ago

My company doesn't pay me for my capacity for "complex, strategic" thinking.

That's why they put me in an open plan office. Where -- as if by design -- the oxygen, lighting and noise levels already preclude those fancy kinds of thinking.

rytill• 7 years ago

(Not that I disagree with the sentiment) What office layout would you prefer?

vanusa2• 7 years ago

A lot like my house, actually.

cycop2• 7 years ago

I have a desk CO2 monitor , it averages between 800 to 1000 in my home office during the day. Anyone else monitor their own environment or know if their office does? Are people even interested in this type of monitoring?

MuffinFlavored• 7 years ago

How can one get rid of the CO2 around your home office/desk during the day?

BubRoss• 7 years ago

Open a window

heavyset_go• 7 years ago

Ventilation, and not just recycling indoor air.

sithadmin• 7 years ago

I monitor air quality in rooms in my home using Awair Glow sensors. They log temperature, humidity, CO2 (ppm), and VOCs (ppb). When CO2 or VOCs hit 900+, I start opening windows to encourage airflow.

Youden2• 7 years ago

Awair Glow doesn't measure CO2, it infers it based on other readings. The results of doing this way are never accurate.

arafa• 7 years ago

I was monitoring indoor CO2 at my home. It definitely swings in the 800-1000 range, especially if I keep the door to the rest of the house closed or mostly closed. But if I leave that door open, it often drops to 600 or less during the day when I'm probably not adding to the CO2. If I open a window it drops to about 430 in a few minutes. It's noisy where I live, though, so I mostly don't ventilate much externally now and live with it.

steve192• 7 years ago

I monitor my office. It works its way up to 1300-1400 ppm during the day. At the start of the day it is the outdoor baseline.

lucb1e3• 7 years ago

Wait, GP said 800-1000, you have it at 1300-1400... isn't 1000 like the headache line? Shouldn't it be around 400-600 in a healthy environment?

Edit: Looking it up, the Wikipedia article on CO2 has the following to say on the topic:

A study of humans exposed in 2.5 hour sessions demonstrated significant negative effects on cognitive abilities at concentrations as low as 0.1% (1000ppm) CO2
Another study observed a decline in basic activity level and information usage at 1000 ppm, when compared to 500 ppm.

So 1ppk is definitely bad. Another datapoint is from 5ppk:

At [5000 ppm for an 8h period, the] International Space Station crew experienced headaches, lethargy, mental slowness, emotional irritation, and sleep disruption.

andor• 7 years ago

I measure CO2 at home.

When the meter hits ~1000ppm, I open all windows until the level is below 500ppm again. Otherwise they stay closed to keep humidity in.

My office has forced ventilation, the level there is usually around 700ppm all day.

I'd be interested in measuring NOx levels, sadly I don't have a sensor for that. A few people in the office like to open windows for comfort, our air tends to feel a bit stale, even though it's continuously exchanged. My theory is that by opening the windows we let NOx in, which causes the staleness and in high enough levels irritates eyes and throats.

ChikkaChiChi• 7 years ago

Can anyone recommend a decent CO2 and VOC monitor for a desktop? It'd be great to have something to help tell me when I need to improve the ventilation.

mikestew• 7 years ago

If you just want a light filter for quality/price/utility that a fellow geek applied without having done a buttload (but a bit) of research, I bought one of these and am satisfied:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07D9SH4M5/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b...

Unfortunately, it's showing out of stock. :-(

dementik2• 7 years ago

I am running ESPHome on ESP8266, sensor is MH-Z19B.

You can also run Tasmota firmware on ESP8266 which means you can easily monitor CO2 value from your browser.

cjbprime2• 7 years ago

Looks neat, I wonder if you could get it down small enough to run on something wearable like a watch-style device.

Animats• 7 years ago

I have an unbranded one I bought from Alibaba. It's a box about 50cm x 75cm x 25cm and runs on 2 AA batteries or USB power. Not rechargeable. Right now it's showing 628 ppm CO2. Outside, about 395 ppm, which is about right. If I breathe on it, 1500 ppm CO2. Has data logger functions and a USB port. Costs about $150.

cycop2• 7 years ago

I use this one https://www.amazon.ca/Autopilot-Desktop-Monitor-Data-Logger/...

mauli• 7 years ago

Have been using and giving away as gifts "TFA Dostmann AirCO2ntrol Mini CO2-Monitor" devices. Costs around 70 bucks. And sensor values are accessible over its usb data lane fairly easy (there are some python implementations out).

npo94• 7 years ago

Imagine paying to have extra oxygen inserted into homes, schools, and offices. To offset CO2 levels. Or perhaps we will use CO2 scrubbers. This will further increase the division between the haves and have-nots because it puts a higher price tag on cognitive abilities.

thrower123• 7 years ago

Or we could just stick a few house plants in each room...

learc83• 7 years ago

A few house plants have no meaningful impact on CO2 levels in an occupies room.

npo94• 7 years ago

Has anyone measured how big of an impact plants have on C02 levels in a room?

I’d imagine it wouldn’t do much, but perhaps large amounts of other biomass might help.

steanne• 7 years ago

https://www.gardenmyths.com/houseplants-increase-oxygen-leve...

ars• 7 years ago

Even in this scenario, you don't need a scrubber, just a fan or open a window.

npo94• 7 years ago

This won’t work if your goal is to lower CO2 levels to below outside levels.

sp3322• 7 years ago

The problem isn't low oxygen, it's high CO2.

dan-robertson2• 7 years ago

I think the idea would be to introduce oxygen (and nitrogen I guess) to displace the CO2

antisthenes• 7 years ago

The biggest hurdle to having better cognitive abilities is living within a culture of ignorance where critical thinking isn't thought of as a necessary and desired skill.

In other words, a 100ppm lower CO2 level might make you grasp concepts 3-5% quicker, but it most certainly won't make you pick up that book in the first place if you didn't want to.

WhompingWindows• 7 years ago

We already have a cheap, plentiful, 100% natural, and green way to do this: plants. Having a dozen plants in every room would go a long way towards fixing the O2/CO2 balance, though the biochemistry and physics may not work out to get us back to square one.

CamperBob2• 7 years ago

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/17/claim-co2-makes-you-s...

It's hard to believe the Navy didn't study this topic as far back as the 1950s and conclude that there was no scientific meat on its bones. If they didn't, they certainly should have.

(Please consider reading the article, then moderating the comment. It's an interesting subject, one that I have basically no knowledge or opinions on myself. Reflexive downvoting makes it hard to pretend that you're not bringing your own preconceptions to the table.)

audunw• 7 years ago

Please consider reading the article, then moderating the comment.

If you don't want a knee-jerk reaction, don't share articles from a site that's widely known to be rather one-sided and biased, and with a super divisive tone to it. Your wording also makes has a rather biased tone to it "It's hard to believe Navy didn't study ..."

Here's a very recent study with some interesting comments: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41526-019-0071-6.pdf?proof=...

"It may be that astronaut-like operations personnel and submariners, who are high-level performers, are more likely to have heightened situational awareness because of their stringent training. Therefore, these groups may develop faster adaptive patterns of responses and be more perceptive of their cognitive decline, and therefore may compensate more efficiently for self-perceived drops in performance than subjects drawn from the general population. Such distinctions could explain the differences in outcomes between college students and submariners to elevated CO"

Seems reasonable that CO2 might have a different effect when motivation is also a huge factor. If you're in a submarine, feeling a bit tired is not an excuse. But in an office setting, it could be what pushes you over the edge to drift away mentally and maybe start procrastinating. In a school setting, motivating students is already a huge uphill battle.

But sure, only the studies the navy did matter, and we should not discuss science in nuanced terms. It's all just the scary researches trying to make CO2 look like a boogey-man!

That said, I think the headline in this post is a bit sensationalist. Seems doubtful that the effects will be that high. But there it is plausible that global CO2 rise could lead to some cognitive decline. Especially if you combine with the trend of packing more people into the same office space.

tgsovlerkhgsel• 7 years ago

In my experience, lack of proper ventilation is a much bigger problem than background CO2 levels.

In other words, this article only holds under the assumption that ventilation stays as bad as it is. If we improve ventilation, we can get an improvement much bigger than the increase in background CO2.

The article even says so:

"In a 2002 study, researchers tested the air in 120 Texas classrooms, and found CO2 levels above 1,000 ppm in 88% of them. In 21% of the classrooms, the concentration exceeded 3,000 ppm." -- current background is ~410 ppm (possibly higher in cities) so even a doubling + better ventilation would improve the situation in most classrooms.

tu7001• 7 years ago

You're right, this is joke, or we're missing something.

Omnitaus• 7 years ago

They're missing something. Right below, in the same article:

"As carbon dioxide levels rise, better ventilation won't be enough to protect us from its effects.

"There's no way to solve this except for keep the CO2 low," Karnauskas said. "You can try to increase ventilation, but you're only going to be ventilating higher-CO2 air, because it's going up outside.""

If CO2 concentrations outdoors double, you're already looking at a minimum of 1000ppm indoors.

txprog• 7 years ago

Shameless plug here. I'm working for https://cozyair.fr - keeping a good indoor air quality is good for both the user but also the the building.

CO2 is not the only factor you should look at, PM are also dangerous when you cook, or when there is outside pollution. NO2/O3 is an outdoor air pollution that we watch. Because the only way to get out the CO2 is ventilation / open your windows for a few minutes. But it can bring another kind of pollution depending your area.

simulate• 7 years ago

Scott Alexander of Slatestarcodex provided some anecdotal evidence of this issue last year:

Last month I moved into a small cottage behind a big group house. The cottage is lovely. The big group house is also lovely, but the people in it started suffering mysterious minor ailments. Headaches, fatigue, poor sleep – all the things that will make your local family doctor say “Take two placebo and call me in the morning”. Using my years of medical training and expertise, I was able to…remain completely unaware of the problem while my housemates solved it themselves.
Aware of this research, my housemates tested their air quality and got levels between 1000 and 3000 ppm, around the level of the worst high-CO2 conditions in the studies. They started leaving their windows open and buying industrial quantities of succulent plants, and the problems mostly disappeared. Since then they’ve spread the word to other people we know afflicted with mysterious fatigue, some of whom have also noticed positive results.

https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/08/23/carbon-dioxide-an-open...

Indoor CO2 could cut our capacity for complex, strategic thinking: study

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