The installation of environmental sensors in our workplaces, schools and homes may be the next big thing, according to a Sept 4 article titled Breathing Better: Using Environmental Sensors to Improve Indoor Air Quality in Wevolver.com.
According to the article, which was admittedly well-written and sourced, the “EPA estimates that the average person in the United States spends approximately 90% of their time indoors, where surprisingly the concentration of pollutants can be 2 to 5 times greater than typical outdoor concentrations.”
The article goes on to state that “poor indoor air quality is associated with health problems like headaches, fatigue, and certain illnesses. While some effects are more short term, long lasting serious health issues such as cancer, heart disease, and cardiovascular disease can result from continuous exposure to harmful airborne particulates.”
It also highlighted the ubiquitous presence of “common indoor pollutants” which included “particulates, gases like CO and CO2, mould, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and carcinogens. These can be caused by a combination of factors such as inadequate ventilation, the presence of indoor pollutants like tobacco smoke, VOCs from cleaning products and furnishings, mould growth, pet dander, and high levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) due to insufficient fresh air exchange.”
The World Health Organization (WHO) has echoed this new “health hazard” alarm with the following key points in a webpage dedicated to Household air pollution. I have added my brief rebuttals in italics.
- Around 2.4 billion people worldwide (around a third of the global population) cook using open fires or inefficient stoves fuelled by kerosene, biomass (wood, animal dung and crop waste) and coal, which generates harmful household air pollution.
Wait a minute, how do open fires contribute to indoor household pollution? Do smoke from these fires always waft indoors and remain there? This seems like a barely-disguised argument against carbon emissions! But I admit, there is some merit to this key point per se.
- Household air pollution was responsible for an estimated 3.2 million deaths per year in 2020, including over 237,000 deaths of children under the age of 5.
Just how were these figures compiled? Is this a definitive conclusion or a causative postulate?
- The combined effects of ambient air pollution and household air pollution are associated with 6.7 million premature deaths annually.
How and which entity made this “association”?
- Household air pollution exposure leads to noncommunicable diseases including stroke, ischaemic heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and lung cancer.
Apart from climate change, I am sure the WHO will blame the recent surge in premature deaths among young, athletic individuals to household air pollution. It is only a matter of time. Notice that the WHO carefully included the words “attributable,” “attributed” or “associated” to deaths it claimed were due to household pollution.
- Women and children, typically responsible for household chores such as cooking collecting (sic) firewood, bear the greatest health burden from the use of polluting fuels and technologies in homes.
I am not sure what “cooking collecting” firewood means, but unless trees and plants grow and wither indoors, all combustible materials are collected outdoors.
- It is essential to expand use of clean fuels and technologies to reduce household air pollution and protect health. These include solar, electricity, biogas, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), natural gas, alcohol fuels, as well as biomass stoves that meet the emission targets in the WHO Guidelines.
Now, we get to the crux of the matter. Isn’t it better for the WHO or a billionaire-funded designated entity to gain real-time access to our homes and offices in order to “protect us from ourselves”? A constellation of smart household sensors will even detect our cognitive health.
And here is the ultimate rebuttal to the household pollution scare. It comes from a 2015 CBS report: “Historical data shows that women have been living longer than men for more than a century. A new study of people born between 1800 and 1935 shows that once infectious diseases were brought under control, men between 50 and 70 years old died twice as often as women – and their rates of death were higher at any age.”
Where do you think women of this epoch had spent most of their time? Yes, overwhelmingly inside their homes, doing backbreaking housework! Yet, they outlived men at twice the rate.
Furthermore, according to a 2019 BBC report, there were plenty of household poisons, marketed as safe during the corresponding 1800-1935 epoch. Babies were given the morphine-laced Mrs Wilmslow’s Soothing Syrup to quieten them down. Victorian-era face powders contained arsenic. Laudanum, an opiate tincture containing morphine and codeine, was celebrated in Sherlock Holmes novels. (Holmes was a user). Morphine and arsenic were actually present in many household nostrums. A line of fashionable top hats from the 1840s contained mercuric nitrate. The substance sometimes caused heavy metal poisoning, which in turn induced violence and aggression. This was the origin of the phrase “mad as a hatter.”
Now, back to the present. If household pollution can be as lethal as the WHO suggests, why did it endorse Covid-19 lockdowns and toxic masking across the planet? There is some irreconcilable contradiction here.
Furthermore, is the WHO tacitly admitting that our homes are laden with products that shed volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and a variety of carcinogens – all emanating from multinationals which routinely contribute millions or even billions to the WHO’s coffers?
If the WHO was serious about our health, it would expose multinationals and utility companies which allow a multitude of toxins to creep into our rivers, tap waters, detergents, foods and a variety of household products. But that would be too easy. That will not bring in billions of dollars in payola. Instead, it seems to be subtly promoting the deployment of environmental sensors in our homes to observe our every breath, whisper and activity. Talk about the ultimate digital gulag!