Grad Student Rigs Cheap Alternative to $1,000 Air Purifiers in China | Hacker News Reader

Grad Student Rigs Cheap Alternative to $1,000 Air Purifiers in China

scienceblog.com

61 pointslbenes32 comments

China, once again proving that:

Cost of healthcare + cost of making "clean air bubbles" for the people that can afford them < cost of actually having clean air for everyone.

Ah, that wonderful free market. Take a big, full lungful of that externalized cost. Don't worry, central government says it won't hurt you!

hey, republicans need someone to look up to

just to pick a recent example off the top of my head, Duke Energy pumped coal ash into a river and may have to pay up to $8k/day (oh noes!) (is $3m even visible in their financials?) [1]

Freedom Industries dumped a barely studied industrial chemical into the river supplying drinking water to Charleston due to gross negligence [2]; the state environmental agency fined them $11k [3]

eh, I'd go on but this is too depressing...

[1] http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/05/23/3441138/epa-duke...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Elk_River_chemical_spill

[3] http://rt.com/usa/171612-wvirginia-water-spill-fine/

Using China as an example of the ills of free markets sounds like a bad joke.

Isn't China's air pollution from the government-built coal power plants, not the free market?

They also hand out coal burning fireplaces as a social welfare program. I haven't seen any data comparing the sources of pollution so this might be a small contributor compared to the big plants.

Actually it is not. In some respect their are probably less regulated and less constrained by what we think are the true "free" market (US). The lack of constraints doesn't come from lack of laws or rules but from non-enforcement and corruption. And, well, nothing says free market like getting the quickest and fastest way to your goal -- bribe your way out, install and control lobbyists, buy up all the competitors and so on. So in that respect one can say they are more free than Americans. (But then again, if one considers the power of lobbying, and revolving doors between industries and agencies regulating then maybe US does have the free-est market of all -- the government is just a branch of each of the large companies).

On a side note of "free" markets: I often hear from deluded libertarians "oh man, FDA (or other such govt agency) is so evil, controlling our lives, so ineffective and corrupt it should be abolished, and people know better what it good to eat". That argument is fine and dandy because we know this "libertarian paradise" doesn't exists, so they can argue and compare a fictional (Ayn Rand-ian ?) universe with a real world and then criticize the real world based on it. Which like comparing Star Wars space ships to real world Navy ships. ("My dilithium crystals are 100x as powerful as your 2 nuclear reactors!")

My response is usually that I invite them to take a plane ride, not into another universe or the future, but across "the pond" to Africa or any 3rd world country with an effectively non-functioning FDA (or similar agency). Where anyone can sell you anything without any controls or checks or worrying about being punished. Vegetables laced with deadly chemicals but that look good on the exterior. You'll get cancer in a couple of years but good luck finding that one vendor. Things like that. The interesting thing is that these "free market" libertarian paradises exist, except they are always failed and corrupt states and they are pretty terrible places to live in.

I'd say the Liberarian (capital L) paradise is premised on the existence of easily transferred information about vendors and customers, and people having both the education and agency to make the best use of the free market.

I mean pointing at failed states as examples of a libertarian state, is like pointing at the corrupt Italian city-states at an example of republicanism. Just because no good examples exist during this time period, doesn't mean no good examples can possible exist.

> paradise is premised on the existence of easily transferred information about vendors and customers, and people having both the education and agency to make the best use of the free market.

That is what I meant by comparing fictitious hypothetical entities to real life example. This is not unlike Communism. Every single failed instance of it was excused as "well it wasn't true Communism". At least one can say it was attempted.

> I mean pointing at failed states as examples of a libertarian state,

Well in my first part I alluded that perhaps China is closer to the ideal libertarian state because there are ways to bypass the governmental control (even though on paper they have more control). The fact that one can sell baby formula laced with chemicals on a large scale is kind of an example of that.

Free markets require respect for private property. China is a place where private property has only been respected by the law less than a decade ago, where the State owns all the land and you can only lease it, and even then you can get beaten to death if you refuse to accept an expropriation.

You can't just say "deregulated == free markets".

A free market economy is a market-based economy where prices for goods and services are set freely by the forces of supply and demand and are allowed to reach their point of equilibrium without intervention by government policy.

This does not exist in China. China is a corporatist state, not a laissez-faire economy.

There are no functioning laissez-faire economies that I know of.

I don't disagree. It might be that they're impossible. All I'm saying is that China is not even close to one.

China is dysfunctional, where the maxim of ask for forgiveness (or avoid detection) reigns over ask for permission. Hong Kong and Singapore are often touted as the freest economically, but both are effectively smallish city states. Living in china makes you appreciate the USA's EPA, however.

The great paradox of this is that it will almost certainly cost China money. Even if you don't care about health, increased sickness and death rates are very bad for business. Even if you don't care about poor people, this will certainly shorten everyone's lives so long as they ever walk outside.

I have four of them in my apartment in Shanghai. They definitely work; I verified it over and over with a laser particle counter. They're loud, but simply running them in the rooms you're not occupying (e.g. in the bedroom during the day, then in the living room during the night) is already a significant gain.

If you get some for your own home, make sure to cut down on the drafts first; running your purifiers full power won't help you if polluted air is always coming in. I lined all my windows with foam tape from the hardware store.

Rather than fighting every day to keep my indoor air clean (that still doesn't do anything for me when I head out) and my internet connection to foreign servers above dialup speeds (four VPNs and counting), I've simply decided to move back to the Bay Area though. :|

$1000? I have a (true) HEPA air filter I use at home to keep allergies and dust down and it was only around $150. Still a lot more than this trick but damn that's expensive.

And your air filter was probably made in China.

Yep. That is some insane (not to mention, evil) price gouging going on there.

These $1k filters are designed for 2.5 ppm particles, not dust (10 ppm) and allergens. China's air problems are quite different from the west's. Your $150 filter would be completely unsuited.

There's some cognitive dissonance going on here.

All that he's doing is buying HEPA filter media and strapping a fan to it. You _can_ spend $1000 on a fancy plastic enclosure with a fan and the same media, but you don't have to. This seems to be a product created for people who will pay a large amount for something simply because it is expensive. (perceived quality)

This [1] is what I have, it is $130 and rated to capture 99.97% of particles > 0.3 µm and is as far as I can tell as good as or better than the filters he is using/selling. Having searched extensively, I could not find a higher class HEPA filter which was not built for a laboratory environment.

>These $1k filters are designed for 2.5 ppm particles, not dust (10 ppm) and allergens.

The units you are using 'parts per million' don't make any sense in this context.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Honeywell-50250-S-99-97%25-Round-Purif...

I have a blue air, like most expats in Beijing. The other air filters are just cheap pieces of crap. There is no dissonance, we've tested them all and the blue air is the only one that actually allows us to sleep on a crazy bad air day.

Tell me, did they test those filters on 800 2.5 ppm days? Because that is what they have to deal with here...there is a scandal in the states whenever the level reaches 100, which is labelled as "unhealthy" but we refer to as "clean air." They've also got to be able to push some serious volume, as the whole apartment needs to be filtered (many of my colleagues have multiple $1k units for this reason, do you really want your kids sleeping with you at night?).

Just check out: http://aqicn.org/city/beijing/m/

And right now we are in clean air season (winter is much much worse).

The HEPA filter will also become ineffective really quickly unless you have a pre-filter to get rid of the larger particles first.

They have multiple levels of filters. We have plenty of 10 ppm also, but the killer is the 2.5.

I don't understand what you mean by parts per million in this context and googling it is literally just bringing me back to this thread.

I work for a manufacturer of higher end air purifiers. Air purification is not a single-problem market waiting for a single solution. People buy purifiers to relieve allergies, to generally have cleaner indoor air, deal with their chemical sensitivities, etc. That alone creates the need for a wide range of products. On top of that, user experience is important to a lot of people...so design, noise levels, UX, etc. creates even more options for people.

The point being that this inexpensive approach solves a very narrow set of problems...leaving many others that the rest of the industry addresses through a wide range of products (just like any other industry). For example, a $10 phone will work just fine making phone calls...yet people still pay $500 for certain smartphones that do/offer much more.

HEPA is only for particulate contaminants. At least some of the expensive filters have activated charcoal and other chemical filters.

> At least some of the expensive filters have activated charcoal

Activated carbon is effective just to remove odors and nothing more. It's not expensive either, it's like $ 10/kg retail.

A high-end filter is more likely to work with ionization. [1]

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Sharp-FPA80UW-Plasmacluster-Purifier-F...

https://twitter.com/BeijingAir

I know people who've bought these kits. They say it's loud, but that it seems to work as they can see the HEPA filter get dirty over time.

My $1000+ air purifiers are quiet enough to keep on in the bedroom at night, even on full speed. Plus they don't just filter particles. Plus they are easy to wheel around when necessary. Yes, the manufacturer (IQAir) is probably making a killing on the machines and the (three) replacement filter modules, but it's worth it for the effectiveness and convenience.

Here's Consumer Reports talking about doing this 3 years ago

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2011/07/why-not-a-do...

HEPA filter + box fan is very common, and very cheap. Not sure why this is particularly notable.

Apparently not very common in China, which would make it notable there.

Citing Talhelm as "grad student" in the title makes it a bit more clickbaity, gives it a sort of a "one weird trick" vibe, but reading the article it does sound like he's onto something.

Earlier discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6659091

Reply on news.ycombinator.com