Apartment Hacks: 10 Ways to Make Your Home More Pollution Proof

This post is sponsored by Origins, a young technology company based in Beijing that develops cutting edge smart devices designed to help people build and sustain a healthy lifestyle.


Beijingers often retreat indoors on the haziest of days to escape the pollution – which seems perfectly sensible given how abysmal the air can get. But unfortunately your home is often not the safe haven you assume it is – there are a host common misconceptions and oversights that can make it just as polluted as, if not worse than, the air outside. 

Liam Bates, the founder Origins, a local startup that sells affordable air purifiers and AQI monitors, says many Beijing apartments can be made more pollution proof with a few simple modifications and changes to your daily routines. We visited a typical Beijing apartment with Bates and his portable Laser Egg AQI monitor to compile this helpful list of simple apartment hacks you can do to vastly improve your home environment.
 

Tip #1: When it comes to changing your filter, six months is too long
Many air purifier manufacturers say their device’s filters only needs to be replaced every six months. But Bates says this standard falls short in Beijing. “A lot of these purifiers weren’t designed here. So [when they say] their filters may last for half a year, it applies to [places like] the US, not Beijing.” Bates advises Beijingers to use air quality monitors to test if their filters are working well. "If you can’t do that, change it as often as you can (if your filter is made of synthetic fibre, change it every couple months!)," he adds. 


Tip #2:  Keep it going all night long … 
Many Beijingers switch their air purifiers off at night because the devices can be noisy when they sleep and they assume that the machines have sufficiently cleaned the air in their homes during the day. Bates says this assumption couldn’t be more wrong. “The pollution can be at its worst at night, for a variety of reasons,” he says, pointing out that factories often work overnight and dirty-emission spewing trucks frequently haul goods around Beijing in the wee hours of the morning. To help safeguard your home during these prime pollution hours, Bates strongly suggests that apartment windows be closed and that air purifiers be switched on to the highest level you can sleep with – after all, it’s better to deal with a little white noise than to breathe in dirty air all night long. 


Tip #3: Auto-sensors aren’t always accurate
Bates adds that purifiers should be left on during the day as well, even if their auto settings switch the machine to the lowest level. “The sensors on these auto settings aren’t very accurate. It can be a really bad day out, and the auto setting on a lot of air purifiers will say that the air quality is fine.” Instead he suggests leaving your windows closed and air purifiers turned up “as high as you can stand the noise” in order to ensure that their apartments stay as PM2.5 free as possible on the most polluted days and during sandstorms.  



Tip #4: Air your apartment out daily, one room at a time 
Despite Bates’ insistence that air purifiers be left on as much as possible on highly polluted days, he also says that switching them off every morning is a good idea so you can air your place out one room at a time (this will prevent your entire apartment from getting filled with pollution). “You should open the windows for at least ten minutes, even on smoggy days, before sealing them shut again and switching the air purifiers back on,” says Bates. “Doing so will get the stale air from the previous day out and allow [relatively] fresh air to circulate inside.” You should follow this practice even on highly polluted days – as long as the filters are functioning correctly, your purifiers should be able to cleanse the air within a few minutes once you have closed your windows. 



Tip #5: Leave your windows open on clear days 
Bates’ suggestions in the last tip go out the window on those all-too rare balmy Beijing days when the air quality index gets mercifully low. “When the AQI is under 50 you should [feel free] to open every window in your place and leave them open all day long,” he says. These days should especially be savored because, as Bates points out, there were only eight days when the AQI was below 50 in 2013. And while the air quality this year has been better overall, we have still had more than our share of smoggy days, so you’d be well advised to take advantage of the low-AQI days as much as possible.



Tip #6: Mind the gaps and plug the holes 
Bates also says that even if you buy the highest quality purifiers, you will not have better air quality if your windows and doors are poorly insulated – an all-too common problem in Beijing. He suggests checking out Taobao for insulation products that are as inexpensive as they are easy to apply to rattling doors and drafty windows to keep the pollution out.   



Tip #7: Firing up that wok can pollute your kitchen
While he was researching and developing Origins’ products, Bates was shocked to learn one surprising fact about lung cancer in China. “You would assume that men would be the most vulnerable demographic, given the high rate of male smokers in China, but the nation’s housewives have a surprisingly high rate of lung cancer, [perhaps] because they statically spend more time in confined Chinese apparent kitchen with woks that waft up smoke,” he says. To demonstration this hazard, Bates places a clove of garlic on a skillet. As the cloves start to smolder the AQI reading on his Laser Egg climbs to 163 within a few minutes. “The smoke unleashed by stir-frying with high heat gets be far worse,” he adds. And even if you don’t cook this way at home, smoky air can seep into your kitchen from the vents if your neighbors stir fry with heavy oil and heat. To avoid breathing in such harmful air, Bates suggests cooking at lower temperatures (because it gives off less smoke) and he half-jokingly said he would even consider wearing a pollution mask when firing up the wok ("it would be uncomfortable, but it's the logical thing to do! I have a friend that does this."). 



Tip #8: Chuck your dust collectors 
The air pollution outside is not the only culprit – virtually every home has a few dust-collecting furniture and items that contribute to the bad air inside. One case in point was a well-worn children’s cushion chair Bates spotted during his demonstration. After giving it a firm slap, which caused a plume of dust to float up. Bates scanned the area around the chair with is Laser Egg. The AQI reading jumped from 29 to 115 in a matter of seconds. “Dust traps like these should simply be thrown away,” says Bates. 



Tip #9: Incensed by incense 
Lighting incense is a common practice in China, but leaving such smoldering sticks to burn in one’s apartment is extremely unhealthy. To prove this point, Bates lit a stick and within seconds the reading on his Laser Egg monitor jumped from 40 to 500, which is the upper end of the scale. “This high reading was due to the amount of smoke trailing off of the stick, which is dangerous no matter what materials the incense is made from,” he explains. As with cigarettes, if you do choose to light up incense at home, be sure to do so with the windows open and any fans on to help circulate the air to the outside before closing the windows and switching your purifiers back on.



Tip #10: Plan on using your fan 
Speaking of fans, even the most sophisticated, high end air purifiers sometimes can’t reach every nook and cranny of a large common area. Bates suggests not only cranking the purifier to the max, but also turning on a ceiling fan, adding: “That way the purified air reached more of the entire room, instead of being stuck in one section.” Ceiling fans can be easily purchased online and in home improvement stores around the city. Portable fans can be just as effective. 

 
The Laser Egg costs 379 RMB and is now available for pre-order via credit card on Paypal or Jingdong at this link.
 

Photos: Uni You

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Guest wrote:

Another useful tip to apartment living without pollution is to buy an apartment in Sweden, New Zealand, Australia, Finnland..... et al. 

Hey that's a super useful tip. Thanks for your insight.

Books by current and former Beijinger staffers

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Yeah, air circulation is important, especially if your room is not a perfect cube!

another tip, in addition to the ceiling fan: Keep the air circulating in your apartment with a couple of inexpensive desk fans.

No air filter works unless the air passes through the filter, so a good habit I've picked up is that on bad days when I have my filter on and my windows closed, I use a couple of small desk fans to move the air around.

One of them I position across the room on top of my fridge, pointing at the air filter that is on the floor.

This keeps the air circulating and the air going through the filters.

Without this, even my IQ Air only seems to clean the air in the immediate vicinity. I have an L-shaped living room with the filter in the long part of the "L". Without the fan, the short part of the "L" will have pockets of air that don't get filtered.

Books by current and former Beijinger staffers

http://astore.amazon.com/truerunmedia-20