Installing Air Filters in Classrooms Has Surprisingly Large Educational Benefits (vox.com) 76
An emergency situation that turned out to be mostly a false alarm led a lot of schools in Los Angeles to install air filters, and something strange happened: Test scores went up. By a lot. And the gains were sustained in the subsequent year rather than fading away. From a report: That's what NYU's Michael Gilraine finds in a new working paper titled "Air Filters, Pollution, and Student Achievement" that looks at the surprising consequences of the Aliso Canyon gas leak in 2015. The impact of the air filters is strikingly large given what a simple change we're talking about. The school district didn't reengineer the school buildings or make dramatic education reforms; they just installed $700 commercially available filters that you could plug into any room in the country. But it's consistent with a growing literature on the cognitive impact of air pollution, which finds that everyone from chess players to baseball umpires to workers in a pear-packing factory suffer deteriorations in performance when the air is more polluted.
If Gilraine's result holds up to further scrutiny, he will have identified what's probably the single most cost-effective education policy intervention -- one that should have particularly large benefits for low-income children. And while it's too hasty to draw sweeping conclusions on the basis of one study, it would be incredibly cheap to have a few cities experiment with installing air filters in some of their schools to get more data and draw clearer conclusions about exactly how much of a difference this makes.
If Gilraine's result holds up to further scrutiny, he will have identified what's probably the single most cost-effective education policy intervention -- one that should have particularly large benefits for low-income children. And while it's too hasty to draw sweeping conclusions on the basis of one study, it would be incredibly cheap to have a few cities experiment with installing air filters in some of their schools to get more data and draw clearer conclusions about exactly how much of a difference this makes.
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What kind of idiot would put their real email address on Slashdot?
The "idiot" with the whitelist. (Score:2)
You put your real IP address on the Internet too. Why are you still alive then?
Simple: A whitelist. A firewall.
You lot think of yourselves as techies, but don't have that for your e-mail address, phone number, and maybe even door bell.
Spam me all you like. Unless you are in my address book, you go to a graylist, and then either to /dev/null, or to to a regular (distributed, multi-engine) spam filter. (Which gives a better score to mails from domains where I signed up or something like that). The gold nugget
I wonder how JBS will feel... (Score:1)
Wait for the conspiracy idiots to object (Score:2)
I can see the headlines now: "I don't want my child to be drugged by the so called 'filters' they are installing in my kid's shcools." (Yes, they will misspell schools.)
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Mandatory air filter installations in the homes of conspiracy theorists will fix that.
In their homes? Why not at the source? (Score:2)
Factory smokestacks, car exhausts, anything creating fine particulate matter or harmful gases, stuff like that.
And if they bitch about "lost efficiency", use corpses of children who died from its effects ... to flog them to death ... veeery inefficiently.
(Alternatively... use a spoon.)
Translation (Score:1)
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It has to be air quality that keeps IQ results low.
Better school, better location and air quality, better IQ... better students..
Miasma AC...
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I can see the headlines now: "I don't want my child to be drugged by the so called 'filters' they are installing in my kid's shcools." (Yes, they will misspell schools.)
Just convince them that it's filtering out the chemtrails from the outside. You can't win, you can only redirect them in ways that are harmless...
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Spread it as a conspiracy! (Score:2)
Make them demand installatiom of the filters *themselves*.
Then use your reason, to "obey them without admitting it". :D
That way they can get "their" will, but you don't have to say it is for their reason.
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The biggest problem will be getting schools to pay for it.
My dad had to get involved to get them to properly clean one room at school. I couldn't breathe properly or concentrate on there and their vacuum cleaner was basically just transferring dust from the floor to every surface.
Fuck that! (Score:3, Funny)
Why fit out all schools with air filters when we could buy a couple F-22 Raptor's instead?!
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Launching a few air-to-ground missiles to get rid of the competition is a much simpler solution than raising test scores.
They could just divert the free meals money (Score:2)
and install air filters, since the filters seem to help students more than having something to eat.
Re:They could just divert the free meals money (Score:5, Funny)
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There's no reason to let them go hungry. You could always feed them the worst performing students. This would save on the bottom line and also improve school test numbers.
Oh Mr Swift, a modest proposal....
It would save a lot in my cities school district, I believe it costs somewhere around 35K per year per student....
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Wasn't it LA that was building shelters for homeless people that ended up costing $600k/unit? Seriously, when the government does something, every panhandler relative of a politician calling itself a "business" comes by looking for a way to mandate a "study", which drives the price through the roof.
Re: They could just divert the free meals money (Score:3)
There you go. Darwinian motivation not to be the slowest member of the herd. Lowest test scores go to - the pit - where there is no way out and you eat what you kill. Could sell the viewing rights to pay-per-view to fund the rest of the school.
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Two kids enter, one kid leaves!
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Schools are a great learning facility, and you've got to start to changing id
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Or feed the high scoring students to the low scoring ones. Some of that Grey matter is sure to transfer over.....
Lots of pushback on this (Score:5, Informative)
Andrew Gelman [columbia.edu], a stats professor at Columbia, has looked at the statistics behind the study and concluded [columbia.edu]
Re:Lots of pushback on this (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a preprint, not a peer-reviewed study, and there's considerable doubt whether their data actually supports the conclusion.
The best way to test a hypothesis would be to run repeated tests. Considering the low cost and possible benefits, I think it's an experiment worth running in schools in various parts of the country. Maybe it's all garbage but the worst thing that could happen is we provide schools with cleaner air.
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The best way to test a hypothesis would be to run repeated tests. Considering the low cost and possible benefits, I think it's an experiment worth running in schools in various parts of the country. Maybe it's all garbage but the worst thing that could happen is we provide schools with cleaner air.
I disagree. This isn't a novel idea that nobody has thought of or tried before.
It's not like there is not already a large existing body of evidence from controlled environments to draw upon. Effects of air quality on health and cognition have been studied for decades. I should add so has the pointlessness of spot filtering.
Re:Lots of pushback on this (Score:4, Insightful)
Completely agree. There's sufficient evidence to justify a larger scale controlled test, which could be double blind. There is a lot of recent research regarding air quality and mental performance. Certainly enough that we should be taking a close look at this.
Re: Lots of pushback on this (Score:3)
The study is probably garbage, most are for one reason or another. But I do not believe the results because air filters are mostly worthless. I did extensive studies of them several years ago and basically for an air filter to do anything: 1) it must be running all of time 2) it must move a lot of air so it uses a lot of power. 3) it must use very good expensive filters. 4) you must clean all surfaces of the room very regularly. 5) any open doors or windows makes it virtually useless. The dust from
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They are spending about 1k per classroom for an air filter.
I think that would adequately fill your 1,2,3.
4,5, Would depend on if the air filter can handle the extra load put on by unclean air.
So again $1k, so think 6+ of your standard air filters for a single classroom.
You don't even need true HEPA for smog, MERV 10-13 will take care of your smog, spores, and airborne bacteria.
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If they're spending that much for each room, wouldn't it make sense to upgrade the filters on the central HVAC system? That way, the entire school gets clean air, AND the noise of an air filter is removed from the classroom.
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I don't disagree with you, but I will point out that if you have allergies an air filter can actually help. I have only mild allergies and put one by my bed to try it out and I noticed an improvement; a bedroom is an ideal case since it's fairly small and you're there for ~8 hours.
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The usefulness is very limited but air filters aren't completely useless. My office has really dusty air because the landlord didn't bother to remove the old drop ceiling; instead, they just installed another drop ceiling under the existing one. The air filter I use in my office cut down on the amount of dusting I need to do, and the filters are always dirty as hell long before I am supposed to change them under regular use. I also have two cats at home so the air filter helps with cat hair, which is bizarr
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Well, the study says absolutely nothing about what kind of filters they used, how efficient they were, or before and after measurements of the particulate counts that the study kept talking about. So, this "study" does seem to be garbage. However I would have no doubt that reducing indoor air pollution could help students performance. But how to effect that change
Bullshit (Score:5, Informative)
The science that proves pollution has a negative impact of cognition is well established.
https://scholar.google.co.uk/s... [google.co.uk]
Further study (Score:3)
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So you want to filter super-clean air too, just to see if it's not just the humming of the filters that make students more intelligent?
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Country air isn't necessarily clean air. Different pollutants from cities, though. Less car exhaust, more industrial and agricultural chemicals, I would imagine.
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A great school in good air.
A low IQ set of students in good air.
A low IQ set of students with low air quality.
Great students doing well in very poor air quality.
Find the sets of building and filters/dont filter.
Then go further to avoid wealth, poverty, food, bus time, travel... teachers politics..
A private school with good air and good IQ results.
A private school with good air and great IQ results.
A gov school with great IQ le
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Good air outside all day, on weekends. Great air when learning.
Buy the filters and find out
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Naw, some of the worst air pollution in California was in the rural central valley. Mostly because smog blew in from LA the stayed there throughout a hot summer, cooking the smog and making it worse.
Re: Further study (Score:2)
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I'm sure that the stench of insecticides and fertilizers had nothing to do with the air quality. /s
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
Air Conditioning (Score:5, Interesting)
The elementary school I went to didn't have air conditioning, and was heated via radiator. When it got hot we'd open the windows. It's still there, and still doesn't have AC. It's in one of the best school districts in the state which, out of the five or so elementary schools, only two were built in the 60's, the rest in the 20's and 30's. The newest building was built in 1975.
The moral of the story - this high performing school district spends money on:
1. Hiring good teachers
2. Hiring good administrators
3. Maintaining it's existing buildings
One of the worst school districts in the states spends it's money on:
1. Building really fancy new school buildings
2. Administrators
3. Teachers
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Your old school building probably has pretty good air quality.
Except in exceptionally polluted areas, most of the problematic stuff in the air in modern buildings originates inside the building, both from materials, remnants from construction, and commonly from within the ventialtion/AC systems themselves.
Granted, windows only ventialte when they're open, but when they do they let in (usually) cleaner air directly, without passing through ducts or machinery where it can pick up accumulated dust, vapors or c
Still the norm in Europe. (Score:3)
We find it very distressing if you can't just open a damn window. You can feel "the dumbing" in line with that smell of stale air. I can't stand it.
But we have no need for air cooling though, around here. It rarey gets that hot. Unless Trump makes the planet grea...hot again some more.
Room carbon monoxide (Score:5, Informative)
The article doesn't say exactly what air filters are used, just that they are normal 700.00 filters that could be plugged in in in room.
Well, if they remove carbon monoxide -- and a quick search reveals that some do -- then there you go:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/0... [nytimes.com]
The higher the carbon dioxide, the worse the test-takers did; at 2,500 ppm, their scores were generally much worse than at 1,000 ppm.
There was actually an article about this on Slashdot 3 - 4 weeks ago.
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plugged in in in room.
Well, if they remove carbon monoxide
The higher the carbon dioxide,
Time to clean the filters man... :)
Is this news or a paid advertisement (Score:3)
I guess all it takes to sell tens of thousands of 700$ air purifiers is get some researcher to release a garbage paper, then get slashdot and a few other news sites to get the word out. It doesn't even matter if this actually works, you make money either way
Here's a better idea (Score:3)
How about NOT shutting of the AC units when the kiddos leave for summer ?
Guess what happens inside a warm / hot building with zero air flow and high humidity ?
MOLD is what happens. Lots of it.
If you really wanted to be fun, send an OSHA inspector to any school about
a week before it opens to the public after a summer break. If they didn't shut
the building down, it would surprise me.
This comment brings back memories... (Score:3)
At my middle school in the mid '90's, a lot of kids in our music room were having a really hard time during class. Lots of eyes were watering and lots of noses were running. A few kids frequently got headaches. Our teacher got so frustrated, one day she grabbed a tissue, walked over to the four large return air vents built into the rear wall, and held it up to each one. One of the four held onto the tissue, while the other three just let the tissue fall straight to the floor. And she also said that, in
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State and Local Government Workers
Workers at state and local government agencies are not covered by Federal OSHA, but have OSHA Act protections if they work in those states that have an OSHA-approved state program. OSHA rules also permit states and territories to develop plans that cover only public sector (state and local government) workers. In these cases, private sector workers and employers remain under Federal OSHA jurisdiction.
https://www.osha.gov/Publicati... [osha.gov]
Correlation is not... (Score:1)
Re:Correlation is not... (Score:4, Informative)
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Kind of hard to tell, since I couldn't find anything in the report about the type or efficiency of the filters used or before and after measurements of particulate counts that the filters were speculated to have reduced.
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I would like to honor your comment ... (Score:2)
But I haven't done a peer-reviewed six sigma double-blind study on you existing yet. Nor on my screen actually showing your comment.
And I'm still in bed, as I also haven't studied thoroughly if the floor is still there!
Reduced CO2 would be my guess (Score:3)
Replacing air filter will increase the total volume of air which will reduce CO2 levels. With a group of people in a room without adequate ventilation CO2 levels can exceed cognitive reducing levels quite rapidly. Even moderate levels over 900ppm have shown marked reductions in performance and at higher levels performance drops are staggering.
Modern buildings are sealed tighter than ever and therefor a regular volume of air exchange is critical to keep CO2 levels at a reasonable level.
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Replacing air filter will increase the total volume of air which will reduce CO2 levels.
There is so much wrong with this statement. I recommend an air filter.
1) You can't increase the total volume of air without expanding the building.
1a) If you meant total volume of air flow - no, that's not going up either. The filters are plugged into a wall socket, they can't do anything other than recirculate room air.
2) Filters don't remove CO2 - it's way too small for a filter to capture. Filters capture larger pollutants and dust.
White Noise (Score:1)
What brand? (Score:2)
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You can DIY it with a 20"x20"x1-4" HEPA filter and a box fan for $40 or so. Super fancy version: https://www.popularmechanics.c... [popularmechanics.com]
I just used some string to attach my filter to my fan which looks much worse, but functions the same. There's a lot of different ways to approach this. Some people put a cheap filter in front of the HEPA to make the expensive filter last longer. Some people use tape to attach the fans.