Hacker News Reader

Comment by WillPostForFood | Hacker News Reader

Extinguish candles with a lid.

If you are worrying about the method by which you extinguish a candle, worrying is what's going to shorten your life, not the candle.

View on HN

I don’t think it’s generating anxiety, just creating a habit. Like washing your hands with soap after you go to the bathroom. Once upon a time that sentence might generate the response “if you’re worrying about how you wash your hands, then the worrying is what’s going to kill you!” (in actuality it was worse, the suggestion that a surgeon should wash his hands before surgery was considered offensive). But today it’s pretty automatic, not some laborious mental checklist. And if you’re in a situation without soap, generally you don’t freak out, you do your best with just water and move on.

Anyone whose health can be reasonably influenced by how you put out a candle has not been born yet. Everyone else has to deal with jobs and living circumstances that requires one to be inside all day, work strange hours, be outside in the sun all day, inhale fine dust from any kind of road nearby. There is a near endless list of similar/worse risk factors at play in one's life. Even though these risks might be provable in their damage to your functioning and there might be reasonable solutions to them, implementing them will still be insignificant. Just like how you should avoid apples because at least apples have killed people.

I have a cheap pm10 meter and ran it continuously for a few weeks. Next too cooking meat the other activity that stood out was blowing out the birthday candles. The pm10 rose to 300 and only was backs to healthy levels (below 50) several hours later. I was as surprised as you are. Next time I'll definitely open a window

How often do you blow out birthday candles?

At least once a year

You're lucky not born on 29th February.

Not all particles are equally toxic. If I had to guess, the smoke from a recently-extinguished candle is probably condensed wax vapor rather than PAHs and heavy metals.

I don't think condensed wax vapor has looks like the dark smoke that comes off a recently extinguished candle. I'm pretty sure it's carbon compounds from the wick.

The black smoke is soot from partially burned wax and it's definitely carcinogenic.

Condensed wax vapor can’t be good for your lungs when inhaled

Where did you get a cheap meter and what do you consider cheap :D?

It's a pms5003 which I bought for €12 from aliexpress

check out fireworks for the Fourth: https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2020/06/a-big-fireworks-pollu...

The absolute values measured are not that high luckily. In the Netherlands at New years pm10 of greater than 1000 can be observed. I believe my outdoor sensor peaked at 900 in the first minutes of 2020. Glad fireworks were banned this year

My first thought on the candles was: If you're worried about paritculate emissions and air quality in your flat then maybe just don't burn anything in your flat.

I haven't researched that, but it always seemed entirely obvious to me that candles aren't exactly healthy in terms of air quality.

One big thing is natural gas combustion producing nitrogen oxides. Gas burners used for cooking make a LOT of it, right inside the home.

That is also one of the arguments for choosing induction over gas, since it removes combustion from the kitchen.

I think my follow on question would be which is better- a scented candle or a scented plug in like an Air Wick or Glade? Or are they similar and the only good choice is to have no perfumes floating in the air? I’ll gladly switch systems if there is a difference but I’d like to have something to make my house smell better.

Depends on your risk tolerance.

Candle emissions have a low but known impact on your health. Plug in air fresheners don't have a known impact but they have god knows what chemicals in them. Maybe you'll get cancer at 60, maybe it would take three lifetimes of exposure to have any effect.

I genuinely can't be convinced there are people alive today that the risk of one scented candle in the home and/or plug in air fresheners are higher than the background danger of auto, industry, and just general pollution. This seems like an anxiety in search of a problem, or am I very underestimating it?

It just seems like the road in front of my house is probably more of a problem than my vanilla candle.

The thing is that wind and sheer volume of air tend to mitigate the pollution but in the home the air can stay static.

I once forgot to extinguish a candle before going to bed, it burned down, and produced a massive amount of soot. Their was a stripe of black suit on the wall where the candle was standing, a black spot on the ceiling, and my upper lip and nostrils were black from soot.

I'm not sure what effect on my health a one time event like this has, but if I can avoid it I will.

I can't do anything about the pollution outside.

I wonder if people thought the same about radioactive substances?

There's a large body of emerging science that points to inhaled particulates reducing health and lifespan.

Thank you. That is such a great one liner that I wrote this down in my quote collection.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com