Mind Readings: What Smoking Tells Us About Air Quality

In this episode, let's talk about cigarette smoke. I was in uh Serbia, Belgrade, Serbia, not too long ago. And one of the things that was really uh very different there culturally than in the United States where I'm based is smoking's allowed pretty much everywhere, inside hotels, inside restaurants, you name it, you can smoke there. I was at uh dinner one night, and it was a you know a nice little um traditional Serbian restaurant. They had all sorts of uh really neat uh local foods, and there were probably about twenty-five, thirty people in the restaurant, not including the staff.

In the next room over, which there was no there were no uh doors or walls, it was just you know, sort of partitioned by decor. Um, there was one person on the far side of the room smoking, and one person uh about two tables over from me smoking, and everything smelled like smoke. Everything smelled like cigarette smoke. Uh my breathing, I could see it in the air and the light in the air. I had to open a window just to get a little bit of fresh air, and even that didn't help all that much.

When I got out, my clothing stank like uh cigarette smoke, and I was in there for a grand total of maybe 30 minutes. It was just so pervasive that just a couple of people were enough to ruin the dining experience. Um, I I ate the rest of my meals uh in my hotel room uh for that trip. So what? Why do we care about this?

This is the perfect illustration about how important air quality is, how important air flow is. We are in an era now, and not just COVID, uh, but also RSV, influenza, all sorts of things, and probably new things that we don't know about yet, that are respiratory, respiratory diseases, respiratory diseases spread by air, by us breathing them out, sneezing them out, coughing them out. And what we forget is that because you know for a good percentage of us in America, especially, forget is like smoking's not allowed in most places now. So we forget how easy it is for things to spread by air, right? You don't need to have every single person in a restaurant smoking to have a smoke-filled room, right?

You only need a couple of people, and and everything smells like that, right? Um if you go to any kind of event, uh, you don't need everybody wearing that really awful cologne. You only need one person who decides that cologne is more of a marinade. And everybody around that person in like a hundred feet around the person knows, yep, somebody overdid it. Somebody, somebody uh really, really went all out.

That's how disease spreads, too. You can't see it, doesn't smell like smoke or bad cologne or something like that, but that's how it spreads. And it spreads fast. It is it spreads evenly, relatively evenly through an airspace. And it's very difficult to control without really good ventilation.

Just opening a window was not enough to get the smoke out of the restaurant, enough to you know to make it palatable to eat there. Just opening a window is not enough to substantially reduce the amount of an airborne pathogen. And again, it's not just COVID, mold, mildew, spores, wildfire smoke, cold dust, uh, you name it, if you're not supposed to be breathing it in and it spreads by air, enclosed indoor spaces are literally the worst. They're a terrible place to be without some kind of protection. And that's why these kinds of crazy looking masks, you know, you look like uh you look like a Batman villain or something, but they work.

They work so well at blocking these things floating around in the air. I'm not suggesting you go hang out places where there's a lot of smoke, uh, where people are smoking in indoors. It's it's not, I mean, you can if you want to, but it is a really good example. Maybe um in your own home, if you have a little bit of like incense uh or perfume, or even like an air freshener, just spray it and see how fast you can detect it. It is it is faster and it is easier to spread than you think.

And take that knowledge and apply it to the disease or the pathogen or the hostile environment of your choice, and you will realize that these devices, while some people uh may critique them, when used properly, are really effective. Now, one other thing that I I I love uh I don't love it, but I uh I I see people commenting is like masks don't work. Well, yeah, mask masks don't work if you use them wrong, right? If you are wearing a mask like this, right? This this is not a mask.

This is this is a uh it's like a bow tie, right? Or wearing a mask like this with your nose completely uncovered. Again, think about that cigarette smoke, right? Is wearing a mask like this on your chin stop you from inhaling cigarette smoke? No.

One of the reasons why people can make the valid claim that masks don't work is you see a whole bunch of people who don't use them properly. It's like putting a condom on your elbow. How'd that person get pregnant? Well, I don't know, and condoms don't work. Well, yeah, you put it on your elbow.

The person who you know clips the seatbelt on in the seat next to them and goes flying through the windshield. Seat belts don't work. Well, they work if you actually put them on yourself properly, but uh when you clip the empty seat closed to you know stop the thing from beeping at you, uh, but you're not wearing your own. Yeah, it doesn't work in that instance. So the takeaway here is twofold.

One, stuff spreads through air really fast. Test it yourself. Try it yourself, see how fast some incense or perfume spreads within a home, a business, etc. And get a sense for how good the ventilation is by then walking out of that place, get out of the airspace, and walk back in five minutes later, ten minutes later, fifteen minutes later, and see if you can still smell it. And if you can, you know the air quality in there is not as good as it could be.

If you don't have to carry around like a a CO2 monitor. And two, properly worn, properly fitted, good breathing filters are highly effective at reducing your exposure to stuff that you don't want to be breathing in, whether it's a virus, bacteria, smoke, mildew, you name it. If you think you're going into an environment that is a hostile environment, put something on. It's like if you know you're going into a place where rocks fall out of the off the ceiling like a cave, put a helmet on. Just just use some common sense.

Anyway, that's it for today. Thanks for tuning in. We'll talk to you soon. If you like this video, go ahead and hit that subscribe button.