RATIONALIZE THIS!

HEPA filter comparison after 18 months part time use within 8 miles of Downtown Boston. 

My neighbor and I recently had a chat about weekly vacuuming. She is from Ukraine originally. My mother's family came to America two generations ago from that general vicinity. We people of Baltic backgrounds tend to like clean floors. Perhaps this comes from having ancestors who lived above barns filled with pigs, chickens and a milk cow all winter long. 

Anyway, my neighbor expressed her astonishment at the amount of grime that accumulates in her house between weekly vacuuming. I explained that the grime comes from the air we imbibe daily as it inevitably comes into our homes despite closed doors and windows. She said, "But we do not live in a big city with factories or anything nearby." 

I took her point. Our leafy suburb was once an industrial area, but now the old brick mills are rehabbed into glitzy tech offices. They have huge double-glazed windows, central air conditioning and their own gyms. Our townhouses are also centrally air conditioned. We have "clean" gas heat which transfers warmth through sealed water pipes along our baseboards. So where is all this sooty air coming from?

Our suburban neighbors are addicted to cars. Three quarters of a mile (a little more than a kilometer)  from us the Massachusetts Turnpike, with six lanes, buzzes with motor vehicles 24 hours a day. Our own street is a major commuter route. And our neighbors on the street drive one block in their fat SUV's to get a cup of coffee at the local Dunkin Donuts. 

In other words, we are breathing in automobile exhaust 24 hours a day.

My new HEPA filters arrived today. I use a compact air purifier at night (6-8 hours) for white noise. I worked night shift as a nurse for many years, so I tend to be a light sleeper. My old HEPA filter, which has been in use for 1/3 day for 18 months, is on the right above. My fresh one is on the left. And, the HEPA filter sits behind a carbonized pre-filter which I vacuum every week.  

The lining of human lungs is not unlike a wetter version of the HEPA filter's surface. I use my lungs all day every day. How do you suppose the surfaces of my lungs look at 69 years of age? 

The tragedy of the current U.S. House of Representatives and its Green New Deal is its enabling of less informed people to dismiss climate issues as not extreme or exaggerated. They are indeed extreme, but seldom exaggerated. Contemporary Americans like to think think their metro-area air is clean. This is utterly ridiculous.