Eight Ways to Protect Your Living Spaces from Bad Air

This is probably not the weather from which you wanted to return from a holiday. Anyway, a nasty pollution spell is blanketing the capital, and here are a few practical tips to battle bad air while you are in Beijing, especially when it comes to air filters and other anti-pollution devices.

I'm assuming that most of you, at this point, have some sort of air filter at home – be it a DIY HEPA filter tied to a fan ala Smart Air, or a top-of-the-line device like IQ Air. However, just turning one on is not cutting the mustard in the worldwide capital of bad air.

Before we get started, I am going to err on the side of practical: it’s just not possible to live a pollution-free life in Beijing, no matter what you do. You can’t control every environment you will be in, but that’s not a reason to give up trying.

So here’s a few practical tips to battle bad air while you are in Beijing:

1. Measure your air

Buying a machine is just the first step: once you've done that you need to measure whether it’s actually doing anything. Therefore, invest in a home air quality monitor.

Origins makes a nice monitor, as does Dylos. They will give you an indication of whether your filter is doing anything at all, and whether your machine needs to be on a higher setting or repositioned somewhere else.

Most of these monitors work by measuring refraction from a small laser beam. The key element to look for in one of these monitors is a reasonably-sized intake fan: if the air is not passing by the laser at roughly the same rate as you are inhaling it, the measurement will not be an accurate reflection of what you are actually breathing.

I’ve seen one monitor on the market that has no intake fan at all, and in a side-by-side test with my Dylos monitor, the local version vastly underestimated the pollution level.

2. At least protect your bedroom

I’m not so paranoid (nor organized) to spend every waking hour to protect myself 24 hours per day. Constantly wearing a mask and spending all waking hours in hermetically-sealed rooms with filtered air can be a real dampener on things like a regular job and a social life.

However, I do make sure the air in my apartment – especially in my bedroom and my child’s bedroom – is well filtered. The way I figure it, we're spending roughly eight of every 24 hours in our beds, and if I can get the air in there pristine, then it gives our lungs a chance to clear out daily.

So if you're not quite ready to lay out the cash for a machine in every room, get one for the bedroom and call it that.

The second reason this is critical is that the air in Beijing usually gets worse at night (this is due to a variety of reasons, one of which is that most construction vehicles can only enter the city after 10pm). So you’ll need to forego any habits you (or your ayi or spouse) have of cracking the windows at night to let in “fresh air” – as the air ain’t so fresh at night.

3. Create air circulation

An air filter is based on the premise of filtering air. Ipso facto, if you want the air in any particular room to be filtered, pretty much all of it has to pass through the filter.

For a long time I assumed that merely turning on my IQ Air in my L-shaped living room was taking care of all the bad air. In fact, when I tested the air in the shorter end of the L (the machine was positioned on the long end), it was as if there was no filtration at all.

So how to do this? Get yourself a small circulating desk fan that will keep the air moving, or use your air conditioner with the cooling function turned off. In my living room I use a desktop circulating fan positioned on top of my IQ Air and an “air cannon” on top of my fridge across the room, pointed towards the IQ Air.  

If you want to get a bit fancier, get a ceiling fan -- a great device that can be purchased fairly cheaply and is great for ciruclating air.

4. Don’t Put Baby in the Corner

Tucking your machine into a corner may satisfy your interior design or fengshui urges, but its a lousy place for filtering air. Ideally, the machine should be positioned near the center of the room, with lots of ventilation around it.

If you can't fight the urge to push the filter it up against a wall, at least make sure air can flow through (and past) the intake area of the machine.

5. Vacuum the air intake once per week

I didn’t use to worry about this, but at one point I noticed that the air in my apartment was bad despite having my IQ Air on full blast. I flipped the machine on its side and discovered the bottom -- where the air intake is -- was completely matted with a thick layer of household dust. This cut the air filtration rate drastically.

Since then, I've made it a habit to vaccuum out the bottom with a hand vacuum once per week. Takes five minutes and makes a huge difference. If you've got an ayi, teach her to do it for you.

6. Keep apartment windows and doors (even interior doors) closed

When I need my apartment to have clean air, I make sure not only the windows and the doors to the outside are closed, but the interior doors are closed as well.

During the day I usually don't need the bedroom, and I'm only in the bathroom and the kitchen for short periods, so I keep the doors to these rooms closed. These areas can remain unfiltered if you and your roommates are spending most of your day time in the living room.

At night, keep your bedroom door closed and your filter on.

7. Get your roommates / family / Ayi on board

None of this works if your roommate / family / ayi us not on board with the plan. Particularly with middle aged and older Chinese, there is a strong belief that keeping the rooms open to the outside air (tongfeng 通风) will make the indoor air healthier. While at one point in time this made sense (and sometimes still does when the air is nice), when it’s AQI 400 out, keep the windows closed or your interior spaces will likely be AQI 400 as well.

8. Live (or sleep) in small spaces

This is not very practical advice if you've just signed a lease, or already own your own apartment/villa. However, it bears mentioning that the smaller your living space, the more effectively the air will be cleaned.

For this reason I’m happy our particular apartment layout has quite small bedrooms. Before bedtime each night I turn the bedroom filters on full blast and the air quality reaches the “excellent” level on my monitor in about 10 minutes. I can then turn the filter to the lowest (or second lowest) setting and be assured I've got great air for the evening.

If your apartment has several rooms, consider using the smallest as your bedroom. If you have a larger space you can't switch out of, consider taking a page out the college hippie handbook and partitioning the room with a tapestry. Getting it air-tight may be a little much, but if your bed and the filter are on one side of it, your air will be slightly cleaner as you sleep.

Image: aqicn.org