Air Quality Matters Podcast Por Simon Jones arte de portada

Air Quality Matters

Air Quality Matters

De: Simon Jones
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Air Quality Matters inside our buildings and out.

This Podcast is about Indoor Air Quality, Outdoor Air Quality, Ventilation, and Health in our homes, workplaces, and education settings.

And we already have many of the tools we need to make a difference.

The conversations we have and how we share this knowledge is the key to our success.

We speak with the leaders at the heart of this sector about them and their work, innovation and where this is all going.

Air quality is the single most significant environmental risk we face to our health and wellbeing, and its impacts on us, our friends, our families, and society are profound.

From housing to the workplace, education to healthcare, the quality of the air we breathe matters.

Air Quality Matters


© 2025 Air Quality Matters Ciencia Historia Natural Naturaleza y Ecología
Episodios
  • The White Box Problem: Why Most Air Purifiers Are Designed to Confuse You - Danny Ashton #114

    The White Box Problem: Why Most Air Purifiers Are Designed to Confuse You - Danny Ashton #114
    Apr 13 2026
    This week, we sit down with Danny Ashton, founder and host of HouseFresh, a consumer comparisons and testing YouTube channel and website for residential air cleaners, to explore a question that fundamentally challenges how we buy, trust, and understand indoor air quality technology: What if the air cleaner market is deliberately designed to confuse you—and what if the only way to cut through the noise is to test everything, measure what matters, and refuse to play the game? Danny brings a rare combination of technical rigour, marketing insight, and consumer advocacy to a sector that desperately needs it. Since 2020, he has tested over 130 air cleaners in real-world conditions, measuring particulate removal performance, sound levels, energy consumption, and filter costs—creating one of the most valuable independent resources available to consumers today. Key Topics Discussed: The 2020 Fog of War: What it was like looking out at the air cleaner landscape during the pandemic. A marketplace flooded with products from every corner of the planet, tested in different ways, presenting benefits in wildly inconsistent formats. An unbelievable minefield for consumers desperate to protect their families. The Invisible Product Problem: Why air cleaners are uniquely vulnerable to being sold poorly. You can tell if an air fryer doesn't work. You can't see particulate matter. A product could be absolutely rubbish and you'd have no idea. That opens the door for companies to sell what sells, not what works. The Affiliate Revenue Trap: How the entire online ecosystem is rigged around pushing products that pay the highest commissions, not the ones that perform best. Some models offer 40 to 50 percent affiliate cuts versus 2 or 3 percent for others. The incentive structure is broken, and consumers pay the price. What Actually Matters: Performance at quiet fan speeds, not just top speed. Energy consumption over time. Filter replacement costs. Sound quality, not just decibel ratings. The ability to turn off ionizers, UV lights, and other additive technologies. The fundamentals that marketing doesn't want you to focus on. The PC Fan Revolution: Why DIY air cleaners built with computer fans and standard filters consistently outperform expensive retail units on performance, noise, and cost. Clean Air Kits, New Care, Nukit—small teams delivering serious engineering without the marketing budget or the proprietary filter lock-in. The Carbon Filter Lie: How thin fabric carbon layers smell sweet for a few weeks and then fail completely, triggering consumers to replace entire filter assemblies. Meanwhile, thick bonded carbon filters can last significantly longer—but they cost more and don't drive repeat sales as aggressively. GUEST: Danny Ashton Founder and Host, HouseFresh Danny Ashton LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/dannyashton/ https://housefresh.com/ https://www.youtube.com/@HouseFresh The Air Quality Matters Podcast in Partnership with Particles Plus https://particlesplus.com/ Lindab (https://www.lindab.ie/) - Eurovent (https://www.eurovent.eu/) - Aico (https://www.aico.co.uk/) The One Take Podcast in Partnership with SafeTraces (https://www.safetraces.com/) and Inbiot (https://www.inbiot.es/?utm_campaign=simon&utm_source=airqualitymatters&utm_medium=podcast) Do check them out in the links and on the Air Quality Matters Website. (https://www.airqualitymatters.net/podcast) If you haven't checked out the YouTube channel its here (https://www.youtube.com/@airqualitymatters-SimonJones). Do subscribe if you can, lots more content is coming soon. Chapters 00:00:00 Introduction: The Invisible Problem with Air Purifiers 00:02:41 The Fog of War: Air Quality During the Pandemic 00:03:18 Learning from the Past: The 2010s Air Purifier Landscape 00:06:06 The Bamboozle Business: How Confusion Sells Products 00:08:07 The Testing Philosophy: Benchmarking What Actually Matters 00:09:37 The Sound and the Fury: Why Quiet Performance Matters Most 00:12:03 The Amazon Hellscape: Peak Online Shopping Meets Air Quality 00:13:38 The Air Fryer Test: Why Air Purifiers Are Uniquely Deceptive 00:29:23 The Great Filter Debate: HEPA Hype vs Real World Performance 00:27:12 The PC Fan Revolution: When Computer Nerds Met Air Quality 00:34:24 The Razor Blade Business Model: Filters as Recurring Revenue 00:37:26 The Size Problem: Why Bigger Really Is Better 00:54:30 The Sensor Gimmick or Game Changer Question 01:07:05 The Carbon Conundrum: When Filters Fight Odors and Lose 01:16:42 The Additive Air Cleaner Minefield: Ionizers, UV, and Chemistry 01:27:06 The Testing Reality: 133 Units and Counting 01:44:22 The YouTube Education Effect: Maturing the Consumer Market 01:37:25 The Future: Matter Protocol and Smart Home Integration 01:50:06 The Mission: Raising the Bar in a Rigged Market
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    1 h y 58 m
  • Weighing Dust vs. Counting Danger: Why PM2.5 Misses the Deadliest Particles - OT42

    Weighing Dust vs. Counting Danger: Why PM2.5 Misses the Deadliest Particles - OT42
    Apr 9 2026
    This week, we step slightly outside the building envelope to examine a question that fundamentally challenges everything we think we know about air pollution: What if the metric the entire world uses to measure air quality is structurally blind to the most dangerous particles we breathe? The document is a perspective piece published in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization, titled Air Quality Standards and WHO Guidance on Particulate Matter Measurement 2.5 Microns. It represents a profound wake-up call for the global air quality community, arguing that PM 2.5—the gold standard metric used worldwide to regulate, monitor, and discuss particulate air pollution—has serious fundamental blind spots that could be undermining decades of public health policy. The World Health Organization's normative guidance on ambient air quality is fundamentally based on evidence from health and exposure studies regarding the harms associated with mass concentrations of airborne particulate matter expressed as PM 2.5. These WHO guidelines are a critical reference point for jurisdictions all over the planet when developing or revising their own ambient air quality standards. But this paper makes a stark argument: our global gold standard is missing the full scope of health-harming particulate air pollution. Key Topics Discussed: The Harmonization Problem: The current WHO guidance does not cover harmonization of averaging methods for concentrations measured during data aggregation, nor does it cover how to handle exceedances of PM 2.5 levels. Variations in how different countries measure and aggregate data can obscure true ambient air pollution levels—comparing apples with oranges on a global scale. The Mass-Based Metric is Fundamentally Flawed: PM 2.5 is a mass-based metric. It simply weighs the dust. It completely fails to consider the physicochemical characteristics of airborne particles—their specific size, chemical composition, bioavailability of potentially harmful elements, and critically, the particle number concentrations of different sized particles, including ultrafine particles. The Bowling Ball vs. Marbles Problem: Imagine a box. A single bowling ball gives you a high weight reading. But what if that box is filled with tens of thousands of marbles? The mass of PM 2.5 comes mostly from larger fine particles. The mass of ultrafine particles is negligible when compared to bigger particles. However, the vast majority of particles in typical ambient environments are ultrafine particles—defined as being less than 0.1 microns. A city could hit its WHO mass targets by removing a few heavy bowling balls but leave tens of thousands of smaller marbles floating around. The 5 Microgram Threshold: When PM 2.5 is higher than 5 micrograms per cubic meter, the mass concentration does not correlate well with the particle number of ultrafine particles. Therefore, control measures that aim to reduce high PM 2.5 levels might not actually reduce the ultrafine particle count at all. A good correlation does exist below 5 micrograms per cubic meter, but as the authors bluntly state, most countries are far from achieving such low ambient air pollution. Why Ultrafine Particles Are So Dangerous: Because they are so small, they don't just get stuck in your throat or upper airways—they go deep. Short-term exposure is associated with respiratory symptoms and systemic inflammation, affecting your heart and blood pressure. Long-term exposure is associated with increased mortality, especially cardiovascular and lung-related mortality, as well as ischemic heart disease. Air Quality Standards and WHO Guidance on Particulate Matter Measurement 2.5 Microns Bulletin of the World Health Organization 10.2471/BLT.23.290522 (https://doi.org/10.2471/BLT.23.290522) The One Take Podcast in Partnership with SafeTraces (https://www.safetraces.com/) and Inbiot (https://www.inbiot.es/?utm_campaign=simon&utm_source=airqualitymatters&utm_medium=podcast) Do check them out in the links and on the Air Quality Matters Website (https://www.airqualitymatters.net/podcast) Chapters 00:00:00 Introduction: The Blind Spot in Our Global Air Quality Standard 00:01:49 The Structural Problem: Missing Harmonization in WHO Guidance 00:02:45 The Fundamental Flaw: Why Mass-Based Metrics Miss the Point 00:03:49 The Bowling Ball vs Marbles Problem: Understanding Particle Count 00:05:14 The Five Microgram Threshold: Where Mass and Number Diverge 00:06:18 The Health Threat: Why Ultrafine Particles Are So Dangerous 00:07:13 The Solution: Introducing PM 2.5 Number Density Metric 00:08:33 The Practical Challenges: Monitoring Ultrafine Particles in the Real World 00:09:32 The Indoor Air Quality Wake-Up Call: What Your Monitors Are Missing 00:11:20 The Path Forward: Harmonizing Global Standards for Real Protection
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    13 m
  • Show Up and Breathe: The Slam Dunk ROI That Still Needs an Energy Story to Sell - Jason Jones #113

    Show Up and Breathe: The Slam Dunk ROI That Still Needs an Energy Story to Sell - Jason Jones #113
    Apr 6 2026
    This week, we sit down with Jason Jones, Director of Air Quality Management at Fellowes, to explore a question that fundamentally challenges how we sell, specify, and sustain indoor air quality solutions in the real world: What if the biggest barrier to clean indoor air isn't technology or science—but the economic conversation we're having with the people who actually have to write the cheques? Jason leads Fellowes' sales and marketing efforts in the air quality space, working closely with distributors, sales representatives, and end users to help them understand the role of smart, responsive air quality management. This is a theory into practice conversation, and it's critically important. We can discuss the impacts of air quality on health, wellbeing, performance, and energy all day long—but at some point, someone, somewhere, has to literally buy into the idea. Jason provides a fascinating window into how a respected player in the sector, delivering products that actually improve air quality, frames the problem and the solutions, how those conversations are going, and where they think this sector is heading next. Key Topics Discussed: Post-Pandemic Reality: How air quality awareness has evolved since COVID. Some people internalized the lesson and carried it forward into the environments they work in. Others were willing to just get back to normal. The perception problem: if it doesn't smell bad, chances are the air must be clean. But we don't get to control the air we breathe in most of the spaces we're in. Where the Traction Is: Healthcare, education, K-12, higher ed, and assisted living facilities are where air quality is sticking most. The generation that missed prom because of the pandemic took that lesson forward into their lives. That's why there's a bright future for air quality—it made an indelible mark on that generation. Leaning Into Energy Savings: Why Fellowes is talking more and more about energy savings and using standards like ASHRAE's Indoor Air Quality Procedure to specify air purification alongside HVAC systems. The goal: reach the same or better air quality while reducing outside air reliance. Clean air is a human right, but the reality is that building owners have bills to pay and balance sheets to worry about. VRP vs IAQP—A 101: Ventilation Rate Procedure is the blunt instrument—prescriptive ventilation rates based on building type and occupancy. Indoor Air Quality Procedure is more sophisticated—designing around specific contaminants of concern, factoring in air purification and filtration, and allowing you to reduce outside air by 30, 40, 50 percent or more. Less outside air means less heating and cooling, smaller HVAC systems, and potential first cost savings. The Education Experiment: Schools are a massive data set. With thousands of classrooms being phased into air quality solutions over time, we'll finally be able to see clear trends in absenteeism rates, teacher sick days, and student test scores. You can't learn if you're not in class. It's that simple. And it's the most black and white metric of them all. GUEST: Jason Jones https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-jones-0aa672b/ Director of Air Quality Management, Fellowes Fellowes https://www.fellowes.com/ The Air Quality Matters Podcast in Partnership with Particles Plus https://particlesplus.com/ Farmwood (https://farmwood.co.uk/) - Eurovent (https://www.eurovent.eu/) - Aico (https://www.aico.co.uk/) - Ultra Protect (https://www.ultra-protect.co.uk/air-quality-matters) The One Take Podcast in Partnership with SafeTraces (https://www.safetraces.com/) and Inbiot (https://www.inbiot.es/?utm_campaign=simon&utm_source=airqualitymatters&utm_medium=podcast) Do check them out in the links and on the Air Quality Matters Website. (https://www.airqualitymatters.net/podcast) If you haven't checked out the YouTube channel its here (https://www.youtube.com/@airqualitymatters-SimonJones). Do subscribe if you can, lots more content is coming soon. Chapters 00:00:00 Introduction: The Commercial Reality of Indoor Air Quality 00:03:11 Post-Pandemic Reality: Who Still Cares About Air Quality? 00:08:09 The Budget Battle: Nice to Have vs Need to Have 00:10:05 The Energy Efficiency Angle: A New Way to Sell Clean Air 00:26:00 VRP vs IAQP: Two Approaches to Building Ventilation 00:24:47 The HVAC Energy Equation: Why Outside Air Is So Expensive 00:34:18 The Complexity Challenge: Is the Industry Ready for IAQP? 00:37:51 The Subjective Element: Why Human Perception Still Matters 01:25:09 The Fellows Ecosystem: Networked Air Quality Management 01:16:44 Education as the Testing Ground: The Data Goldmine 01:41:28 The AI Revolution: Natural Language Control of Building Systems
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    1 h y 46 m
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