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Comment by hannob | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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