Carl Zimmer

Yes, I do have a CO2 monitor.

It's in the other room.

I take it with me partly to protect my own health, but also partly out of curiosity because carbon dioxide in the room is actually a pretty good way of figuring out how much ventilation there is in the room.

what your potential risk is of getting sick if someone is breathing out COVID or some other airborne disease.

They're not that expensive and they're not that big.

And taking them on planes is particularly illuminating.

It's just incredible just how high the carbon dioxide rate goes up.

You're sitting on the plane, they've closed the doors, you haven't taken off yet.

shoots way up.

Once you get in the air and the filter system starts up, it starts going down, which is good.

But then you land and back up again.

But in terms of, you know, when we're not flying, we're spending a lot of our time indoors.

And yeah, so you use the word commitment to indoor air quality standards.

I think commitment is putting it a little strongly.

The Biden administration is setting targets.

They're encouraging that people meet certain targets.

And those people you mentioned, like Joe Allen at Harvard, have actually been putting together standards, like saying, okay, let's

Let's say that when you build a new school or a new building, let's say that you make sure that you don't get carbon dioxide readings above this rate.

Let's try to get 14 liters per second per person of ventilated fresh air.

And they're actually going further.