Why big city fitness gyms need to install clean air tech.

Third article in half a month on “Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups” bad LA air days

Yet another bad air day in Los Angeles last night (see app screenshot) [originally published Jan 23, 2014]. We’ve now done three articles on ‘Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups’ bad air days in Los Angeles due to the Colby Fire and random automobile pollution just in the month of January alone. Incidentally, those “sensitive groups” involve working out at the fitness gym, which we’ll talk a bit more about in a bit.

Despite a serious air purifier, our indoor PM2.5 dust particle counts on our Laser Particle Counter spiked around 10:30 PM Pacific Time yesterday, so we knew something was up. Running the numbers through our free app, they were starting to get bad. The EPA was still showing PM2.5 levels in the area as “moderate”, but EPA data is weighted average of 4-hour and 24-hour data (it sort of has to be), so it is delayed.

Canceled trip to the gym due to the advanced warning

The particle counter and our app had given us some advanced warning of what was to come, as counts continued to spike overnight. We knew a particle storm was coming, so we strategically repositioned our air purifiers (now two of them where we would normally only have one) and it was a still a struggle to keep our indoor air in the EPA “green” zone. And one of our staff members called off the late-night workout session he planned at the gym. (We can’t work on this startup all the time.)

You’ll notice in all the screenshots the PM2.5 concentration per the EPA is above 35 micrograms per cubic meter (The line next to the Twitter icon above the unhealthy warning.)

Outdoor air above EPA, South Korean and World Health Organization limits … yet again

According to Wikipedia, that’s at or above the 24-hour average exposure limit in many countries, including the United States, Canada, and Japan. It’s above the annual average exposure limit in the E.U and South Korea.  In it’s 2005 Air quality guideline update, World Health Organization actually recommended lower guideline limits of just 25 micrograms per cubic meter for a 24-hour average and 10 micrograms/m3 average annual exposure limit.

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