This Is Your Brain On Stale Air

Floating around this week is this video [this video] wherein a person sits in a sealed off cube full of plants and carbon dioxide monitors, with an EMT on the other side for safety - the person claims that 300 ppm of outside air was fresh, and now 400 ppm is fresh - but that indoors, it can easily climb to over 1000ppm and that there might be a significant cognitive decline associated with it. I was looking for a nice wall receptacle for a hallways that measures carbon dioxide inside my house because I will go for weeks at a time without getting a proper air-out. In northern new england, honestly, it could be months for all I know. Only a few random door openings and the leakiness of the house are my exchange. I don't know how accurate their claim is, and it's certainly a universal solvent to consider stale air is the reason a person is behaving a way. Measuring the levels and being aware of it seems worth 60 bucks, if it's actually a factor in our rationality.

I’ve lived in a lot of places in my life, and spent at least some time in seclusion in each one. And I have experienced the “cabin fever” feeling before... but not everywhere I’ve lived. In some environments, it happened easily and immediately; in others, it never did. I’ve tried to think about my environment at each juncture to figure out if the situations where I did experience “cabin fever” had anything in common. Every time I experienced the symptoms described in the article (restlessness, lightheadedness, insomnia, irritability, etc.) I was living in a modern, rather-well-sealed apartment building; or was on a long road-trip in a modern, rather-well-sealed car; or was on a long plane flight; or was staying in a modern hotel room in a high-rise; or I was camping in a tent or camper-trailer. Meanwhile, I’ve never experienced these symptoms while living in an old, drafty brick building (repurposed office building); or while living in a Victorian-era farmhouse; or while staying in a low-rent motel; or while camping under the stars. My conclusion is that “cabin fever” is a feeling you get when your living space is not well-ventilated. Specifically, when there’s no way to create a through-draft of air, so even opening windows won’t force out the air deeper in the home—leading to that air becoming stale, creating a built-up “cloud” of CO2, other gaseous bodily wastes, and exhaled aerosolized water droplets (you know, those things that viruses travel on.) It happens faster when

Covid aside, a reading of almost 6000 ppm in the bus is extremely high, at this level there is a clear impact on cognitive function. See this study[1] in Nature that measured the effects of CO2 at 1000, 3000, and 5000 PPM. Quote: "For the Psychomotor Vigilance Test, the probability of achieving an accuracy score of >90% decreased in a dose–response like fashion from 79.5%, 74.7%, 73.4%, to 64.0% for 600, 1200, 2400, and 5000 ppm, respectively". Another study[2] tried to establish the effect on response time, finding that "For every 500ppm increase, we saw response times 1.4-1.8% slower, and 2.1-2.4% lower throughput." For a more pop-sci take on this, see this Tom Scott video where a subject is placed inside of an airtight chamber where the CO2 gradually increases, with a major impact on their brain function: [this video] [1] [link] [2] [link]

Here is our Kickstarter Project Link. We'd love your support! My best friend and I have spent the past year trying to track the environment in our NYC apartments, cafés, and subway cars. We tried the usual handheld monitors and bulky bricks, but none were truly pocket‑friendly, user friendly, and most importantly, they only tracked a single metric, and poorly at that. So we built our own. Made it a powerhouse of multiple sensors. And miniatured it to fit in your pocket when you want to put it away. Our device (named Halo Air after our favorite game, Halo 3) snaps to the back of any smartphone and streams CO₂, PM1/2.5/10, t‑VOCs, temp, and humidity into our app, a lockscreen widget, and we'll be making the data feed available too. No disposable batteries, no calibration stickers—just one USB‑C charge and go. We just hit Kickstarter yesterday. If you’re curious, we’d love your feedback (good, bad, brutal) and—if it resonates—your support as early backers. The link’s in the first comment to avoid spamming the post. Huge thanks to Reddit for the inspiration threads on sensor accuracy, cross‑calibration, and DIY enclosures; your collective brainpower shaped Halo Air more than you know. If you're interested in the area, here are some cool links that I've heard people say completely changed their thinking about air quality: This Is Your Brain On Stale Air (Youtube) [this video] Elon's X thread about his CO2 Monitor: [link] Diary of a CEO: The Air In Your Room Is Making You Stupid & Harmi