First, I’m not questioning the recommendation to stay indoors, or that poor air quality is bad for your health.
I don’t understand how staying inside is better, especially in homes (like mine) that don’t have central ventilation or air filters. My home isn’t air-tight, and I can’t recycle the air I’m breathing out – so there must be new air coming in from outside.
Can anyone explain *why* it’s safer to stay indoors? How is the air inside safer to breathe?
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Pollutants behave differently than the air itself.
Firstly, obviously, if you have AC or air filters, you’ll have cleaner air.
But the air that comes in through windows is also slightly cleaner than the air outside. The pollution is usually heavier than regular air. It goes up first because it’s warm coming out of car exhausts and factories and the like, but once it cools down it sinks back to the ground. It’s more likely to go ‘straight’ down (or at least with the wind currents) than it is to take a turn and go through a window. Regular air is lighter and will drift into your home much easier.
It doesn’t make the air inside clean, but it makes it cleaner than outside. Slightly. It also means that if you have your windows/doors opened downstairs, the air will be a bit cleaner upstairs because the pollutants don’t tend to rise without more heat.
Again, it doesn’t make the air clean. Just a little cleaner compared to the air outside where you live.
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