Lazarus Long Profile picture
Clean Air Advocate. I know how you can avoid those infections - and what they do to you, if you do get infected. #PZC. 19-2.
19 subscribers
Jul 27 11 tweets 6 min read
AVERAGE CO2 in the dead space below an N95? 1-3% - or 10,000 to 30,000 ppm. Scary?

No. You see that's the average.

Humans have focused on average or peak exhalations/waveforms.

We haven't studied the LOW POINT with capnography.

We have done it with simulations. Image
There are no published experimental (human) capnography studies inside N95 dead space that show the CO₂ dropping down as low as ~0.4% within a single exhalation. Human trials typically measure peak or average values rather than full breath waveforms.
As you can see, the amount of CO2 in the N95 goes down.

Why? Because the air around us has so much less CO2. When we inhale, it mixes with that high CO2.

Dilution and diffusion both at play.
journals.plos.org/plosone/articl…Image
Jul 27 14 tweets 7 min read
How NOT to Science. A time travel thread and magic.

This is Helmut Traindl - the engineer who devised the procedure behind Walach CO2 study that was retracted after 16 days:
jamanetwork.com/journals/jamap…

Then, republished by Dr. Domingo just 6 months later.
sciencedirect.com/science/articl… Image @RetractionWatch had an interesting write-up on how it was republished by Dr. Domingo.

It rings of plausible deniability. Except it smells vaguely of bad faith.

retractionwatch.com/2022/08/01/one…Image
Jul 24 7 tweets 3 min read
So, in your apartment or hotel, we saw below how its heated facade, or front, could drive your downstairs neighbor cough into your lungs.

Let's step inside your living room now, and step forward in time to winter.

What happens if your sick neighbor is seated in that living /1 room?

Where is the worst place for them to be seated if you have your heat coming from a heat register up on the wall?

Next to your cold window.

The cold air cools your sick neighbor's exhaled infectious air, and drives it to the ground.

Where it sidles along until Image
Image
Jul 21 13 tweets 4 min read
I looked at your thread @moog77 . The reason that epidemiological didn't work (cases continued to go up)? Is the same reason the 2023 Cochrane fails, ironically, after you touted it as the "gold standard."

Not because clean air doesn't reduce cases. It empirically does. It just doesn't do it where it's not being applied.

What do I mean?

2023 Cochrane "the gold standard" - for community masking is based on a few studies.

One is Alfelali (2020) set in the Haji season
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC75…
Jul 21 17 tweets 8 min read
Do you live in an apartment or stay in hotels?

Got a "oops, outside air can get you" study. Coming out of Beijing University of Technology - taking airborne transmission seriously.

They rented 50 rooms of a building. Did some very cool CFD work - then, be still my heart, Image followed it up with tracer gas experimentation.

See room 303 above? 403 and 503 got whatever came out of 303.

With studies like these, there are so many variables. But, if I lived in an apartment, I would set have at least a PC fan CR Box next to those open windows.
Jul 20 29 tweets 11 min read
Swimming and showering.

Below is the thread of collected "swimming/ showering safer in indoor shared air" solutions, so far.

You might be thinking that the chlorine smell protects you near the pool. Chlorox is great.

But you would be thinking incorrectly.

Thread. Filti media wrapped out an inside brace made out of zip ties.  Laugh all you want, but it works, yo. Have there been indoor swimming pool transmission events? Yes.

jamanetwork.com/journals/jaman…

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34606662/

And more.

Were they in the swimming pool or in the more likely shower/ locker rooms or lobby? Nobody has teased that out.
Jul 18 15 tweets 5 min read
I am deep in NCL3 studies as someone pushed back on swimming pool transmission-and I take my disease transmission prevention very seriously.

Wait - what? NCL3? Image NCL3 is trichloramine. That actually maybe most of what you are smelling in the pool.

Hold onto this golden nugget - swimmer's sweat and body oil ALSO results in trichloramine.

DO NOT THINK about the urea (ahem, urine).

As a lap swimmer, I did NOT know that. Image
Jul 17 17 tweets 7 min read
So, I got curious.

Despite the pore sizes of the N95 filtration being so much larger than CO2 molecules, there is a greater concentration of CO2 in the N95, than outside.

Why?

We exhale 4–5% CO2 (40,000–50,000 ppm), much higher than the ~0.04% (400 ppm) in ambient air. Image What is the the AVERAGE CO2 in the dead space below an N95? 1-3% - or 10,000 to 30,000 ppm.

Sounds scary high, right? It's the AVERAGE. Below you can see it rise and fall. See how at the end of the inhalation it's almost zero?

But what happens to that CO2? We inhaled it Image
Jul 15 36 tweets 21 min read
Are you reading this thread because you said you were worried about CO2 in an N95?

Hypercapnia?

1. Don't worry - be happy. This thread explains why you should not be worried about those things.

2. If still worried? We'll get to what YOU can do about it. In 1998, long before the mask controversy of 2020, the OSHA Respiratory Protection Standard was passed.


Cntrl F for
"carbon dioxide", "dead space", or "physiological burden".

Before they passed it, they consulted industry, unions, academic researchers. osha.gov/sites/default/…Image
Image
Image
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Jul 13 6 tweets 3 min read
Tired: Infectious fecal and respiratory aerosols.
Wired: Infectious urine aerosols.

Do you know how many aerosols you generate at the urinal, standing up?

Do you know how many aerosols you generate on the toilet, sitting down?

Do you know you have a thermal plume lifting both up to your breathing zone?

Do you know that you can get an N95 at Home Depot or Lowes - and you can wear it into their public restrooms?

Studies to come to avoid the Musk Masking algorithm.
Jun 8 6 tweets 3 min read
"COVID IS OVER, YOU DON'T NEED THAT!"

Reason 4,657 on why I mask now that I understand aerosols and transmission. It's not all about COVID.

This is Chicago, but it's really Anytown, USA. Image "The human DNA virome. Prevalences (%) of viral DNAs in the body (≥1 tissue positive for a virus) and in different organs as determined by qPCR or NGS"

researchgate.net/figure/The-hum…

x.com/AbundantLandUs… Image
Jun 7 9 tweets 4 min read
How do we know TB is airborne?

71 guinea pigs gave their lives between 1956 and 1958 in the eponymous study by Riley et al, getting TB air piped in from some TB patients, to prove TB is airborne.

Influenza is kind of airborne per most doctors. But kind of not.

So....

/1 Image We need some volunteers.

Will horses be those volunteers that finally lay it all out?

Yes - but none of them lost their lives.

Air samplers were deployed and tracked horses inoculated with Equine influenza virus (EIV).

From the very first day post inoculation (dpi), until the Image
May 26 21 tweets 12 min read
Thank you @BarryHunt008 for flagging this.

@ThailandMedicaX, retweeted by some because of their controversial takes (ahem, their lies?), is saying that FAR-UVC is dangerous because somehow the light will get into the lungs.

Lol.

They are just apparent supplement grifters.

🧵 Image I noticed they were using @NukitToBeSure's excellent torches as their example picture.

Strange to be so selective of an example picture for someone purporting to be an independent news source on health.

Hmm. I helped defend Nukit against charges of Image
May 25 30 tweets 12 min read
You've heard of "The Three Problem." - great book, and excellent Netflix series.

If you want to be avoid catching Covid, you probably have "The Empty Room" situation in the back of your mind.

How long after a room had people in it, can you safely demask?

Thread.
/1 3 body problem netflix cover showing a eye with a countdown running in it.  That was a countdown to each person's death. Measles was thought to be airborne after a child caught measles an hour after the infected child left the same office.

.

Interestingly, you can see the reluctance in blue below to call measles airborne. Much like the WHO with @mvankerkhove researchgate.net/publication/19…In February 1981, a measles outbreak occurred in a pediatric practice in DeKalb County, GA. The source case, a 12-year-old boy vaccinated against measles at 11 1/2 months of age, was in the office for one hour on the second day of rash, primarily in a single examining room. On examination, he was noted to be coughing vigorously. Seven secondary cases of measles occurred due to exposure in the office. Four children had transient contact with the source patient as he entered or exited through the waiting room; only one of the four had face-to-face contact within 1 m of the source patient. The...
May 23 5 tweets 2 min read
Mum's the word - if @SecKennedy is Mum.

You see, I have been a VERY FOCAL CDC critic. But you can't criticize without listening.

And I have been noticing that that the CDC has been very, very quiet.

NPR noticed as well. Image This is crazy. Image
May 1 32 tweets 11 min read
Fit factor of 250- 4000 versus the normal 100-200 for an N95? Where do I sign up?

Oops, that's here. With me. Starting a build with an Ebay'd Bullard EVA PAPR's filter - and some DIY loving goodness of a heat gun and PVC pipes.

The benefit of this build will be the over 10 hour run-time of the massive battery on the PAPR.
Apr 28 7 tweets 2 min read
I have a new thing to say to why I mask.

Ronald Reagan, Michael J Fox, Robin Williams, Lou Gehrig, Bruce Willis.

Alzheimer's, Parkinsons, Lew Body Dementia, ALS, CJD

All of them are dying or are dead from - the common cold.

You see, One of the main viruses that results in the cold is a virus called OC43.

And it turns out that it's neuroinvasive - and is strongly associated with all of those diseases.

Even though it's just a cold in the beginning. So, those are 5 really bad diseases that I am protecting
Apr 26 27 tweets 13 min read
Safer showering and swimming with great breathability!

Others have used a snorkel w/ N95s - but those then collapse around the snorkel, and breathability is more restricted. This new approach is w/ an internal BRACE!

I took a shower with this, and it worked perfectly. Build 🧵 Image This is a great technique, but I was looking for something with more breathability.

Image
Apr 24 6 tweets 3 min read
Got bored. Let's just check out Google Scholar and E Coli. Oh my. Oh my, that's not good.

Yes, yet another episode of "that's airborne, TOO?!!!!!"

THREAD Pigs:
"Airborne E. coli were isolated from indoor air,....and downwind air samples (10, 50, 100, 200 and 400 m away) for five swine houses" (1)

Cows:
"E. coli was isolated in both inside and outside air, even in samples taken 150 m from the farm." (2)

READY FOR THE FUN ONES?
Apr 21 4 tweets 2 min read
Pope Francis passed - R.I.P.

He died from not masking.

Not masking led him to getting polymicrobial respiratory infection (multiple pathogens) on 2/6/2025, leading to bronchitis, to bilateral pneumonia, a respiratory event
- leading to stroke and cardiac arrest. Timeline here:
cbsnews.com/news/pope-fran…

History of respiratory challenges.
cbsnews.com/news/pope-fran…

And here showing every year lately having "respiratory infections."
usatoday.com/story/life/hea…
Apr 20 9 tweets 3 min read
Save this QR Code to your phone or save this tweet. Save it for the next time you get harassed by an antimasker.

This links to the article from March 27th, 2025, with Trump saying it was so nice of a reporter to be wearing a mask.

There's a video of him on this page.

/1 QR Code to https://web.archive.org/web/20250327191931/https://www.mediaite.com/news/trump-singles-out-reporter-for-wearing-mask-in-oval-office-you-feel-more-comfortable-right/ President Donald Trump stopped answering San Francisco Chronicle Washington correspondent Shira Stein, @shiramstein, to comment on her wearing a COVID mask in the Oval Office, remarking, “You’re wearing a mask! So nice of you!” SHIRA STEIN: Mr. President, you said you want to return education control to the states, how would you handle it if a state like California were to put in place education policies that you don’t agree with?  PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: You know, I haven’t seen a mask in so long! You’re wearing a mask! So nice of you!  I haven’ seen anybody wearing a mask in a long time. It’s good. You feel more comfortable, right?  SHIRA STEIN: Yes.  PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Good. That’s good. So go ahead.  SHIRA STEIN: You said you want to return education control to the states. How would you handle it if a sta...