Clean air is undervalued. Apart from the threat of COVID-19 and its variants, just what is in the air that’s so harmful and what damage can it do to our health? Airborne particles that are too small to see with the naked eye.
Airborne particulate matter (PM) is not a single pollutant.
It is a complex mixture of solids and aerosols composed of small droplets of liquid, dry solid fragments, and solid cores with liquid coatings. Particles vary widely in size, shape, and chemical composition.
Particles are defined by their size.
Those with a diameter of 10 microns or less (PM10) are inhalable into the lungs and can induce adverse health effects.
Fine particulate matter is defined as particles that are 2.5 microns or less in diameter (PM2.5).
What is the Difference Between PM10 and PM2.5?
Emissions from the combustion of gasoline, oil, diesel fuel, or wood produce much of the PM2.5 pollution found in outdoor air, as well as a significant proportion of PM10.
PM10 also includes dust from construction sites, landfills, and agriculture, wildfires and brush/waste burning, industrial sources, wind-blown dust from open lands, pollen, and fragments of bacteria.
The detrimental effects of PM
In the USA, poor air quality is responsible for $150 billion of illness-related costs per year. Of that, $93 billion represents lost productivity from headaches, fatigue, and irritation associated with sick building syndrome.
The World Green Building Council reports that, after cleaning the indoor air, employers have seen workplace productivity increase by up to 11%. A Harvard study showed that, with better air quality, cognitive scores were 61% higher across nine functional domains, including crisis response, strategy, and focused activity level.
Bio pathogens
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) now acknowledges antibiotic resistance as one of the biggest public health challenges of our time.
That means extending clean air from hospitals and medical practices to schools, offices, and other shared spaces.
In addition to physical contact and ingestion, infectious agents like bacteria and viruses spread:
- Through droplets
Small droplets containing the infectious agent are spread by coughing or sneezing and land directly on another person, or on an object from which the organism spreads through physical contact. - By airborne infection
A person directly inhales the exhaled breath of an infected person; this is how tuberculosis spreads, for example. - By airborne dissemination
The infectious agent is disseminated in the air – for example, during dressing changes or swift movement.
The principal mode by which people are infected with SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) is through exposure to respiratory droplets carrying the infectious viruses.
The threshold for Covid-19 infection is estimated at only 300 virus particles, compared to a typical inhaled viral infection requiring 1,950 to 3,000 particles. Covid is considerably more contagious.
