Allergies suddenly better in office building. Why?

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bardcan

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I normally suffer from terrible allergies. Yesterday, I went to wait for a specialist's appointment in an office building attached to the local hospital for about two hours. During that time, for the first time in years, my allergies totally left me. So did my asthma and headache symptoms. I really felt amazing.
As soon as I left, they came back.
Out of interest, I went back to the same building today for a couple of hours - and the same thing happened! I felt great after about 30 minutes in the building.

What is so special about this building?
I have a very clean newly renovated house with a $1000 air purifier, whereas the office building has carpeting, which usually sets off my allergies.

I can't make any sense of it. Does anyone have any ideas?
 
They may have a special air handling system and use non-allergenic materials for furnishings...since it's a medical facility, I wouldn't be surprised at that.
 
I live in an allergy-pure home. It allows me to have a safe-house, where my chronic, nasty asthma and sinus problems and other allergy symptoms are very much under control. :cool: My home used to be the worst place for my asthma and sinus problems. The battle against nasty, debilitating allergies can be won through understanding exactly what causes your own allergic reactions and misery.

I have seven HEPA air purifiers in my home. I only use them when the everglades, or something else is on fire and there is smoke in the air, because the air purifiers are not really effective against the ridiculously tiny, trace allergens.



I believe that air purifiers are almost worthless. They help against dust and large impurities, but won't protect against the small, trace amounts of outgassing from things like formaldehyde.

What types of materials were used in renovating your home? :confused:
 
I don't know what materials were used in the renovation, though I don't think it really matters since I've lived in a dozen different houses in my life and my symptoms have remained constant.

Also, the IQAir has a military-grade gas filter. The V8 cell. It even filters ozone (apparently the only one in the world that does)... still I haven't noticed any benefits from using it. : (
 
It doesn't matter if the material is new, from a recent renovation, or old, from an existing structure.

Buts..... I am just a fellow allergy sufferer, without any medical training or experience, so my opinion is just that, an opinion. :D

Best of luck figuring it out! :wave:
 
my friend wrote:
That's really interesting my man. Only a few things spring to mind:
1) filtered air con (you mentioned that before. Might be better than
your purifier because it filters all the air that enters that area
(the purifier gets a mix of air into the room i guess (and maybe the
air con humidifies?)
2) Frequent cleaning - i think hospitals are cleaned every day
3) Hospital grade detergents - anti bacterial anti fungal, or maybe
its just the chemicals alone that make you feel better??
4) Elevation? Was it just the 8th floor you felt better? Maybe most
pollens and dusts don't carry up that high.


I wrote:
Right... those were the things I was thinking too... still, it didn't fully explain it.

1 - my filter is pretty damned good - and I've done experiments where I've cleaned my room spotless, sprayed the allersearch pollen, dustmite and mould killer till the bottle was empty. and run the purifier on full speed for 12 hours... Nothing.
whereas in the hospital I start feeling better within half an hour.

2 - maybe, but a lot of places are clean

3 - hmmm... could be. but how would cleaning chemicals make one feel better?

4 - the WHO did a study a few years ago on that - vertical allergy response or something - and found that the higher floor you're on the worse allergies you're going to get. they rise up apparently.


there's one interesting point that a woman on an allergy forum pointed out (they're very interested about it too) - that they never open the windows (you can't open them) and you have to take an elevator up to the floor. So there's essentially no air coming in except through the air con system (with filter I'm guessing)... So i'm guessing that there's really no way for pollen to get in, except on people's clothes. It's sort of like having an airlock in a spaceship.
They say pollen sits around for weeks or months (i'm not sure) indoors if it's not cleaned away. so, even if I cleaned my room and ran the purifier, I would have to do that every day and almost never open my window or door for weeks before I would start to notice the same effect.
 
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