Want clean air? Don’t hold your breath

WHENEVER I wear a fitness bangle, I become morbidly obsessed with the amount of REM sleep I get per night, which the gadget displays on screen.

Ditto my blood oxygen levels (which an old phone used to inform me about). A couple of weeks of measuring those and I was convinced my end was nigh.

But now all these worries have been shifted to the back burner: my real fear is about whether the air quality in my living room has dropped below 75 per cent.

If I was a slightly higher grade of hypochondriac, I could see myself getting dangerously obsessed with the Awair air quality monitor.

It displays an alarming red light when it judges that your indoor air quality has dropped – and the front of the gadget constantly shows a glowing percentage.

For allergy sufferers, it might actually be useful: it pairs with a mobile app and displays four main graphs, including humidity, dust levels, VO2 chemical levels and CO2. The percentage figure is an index based on all four. It certainly offers an insight into the invisible world of your home: when I sat down on my dingy sofa, a sandstorm of dust shot into the air – and the air quality plummeted.

If I was a slightly more functional human being, I might even make a few lifestyle changes. As it is, I’ve mainly thought: ‘Ooh, fancy that.’

It also offers ‘tips’ to help you feel ‘more awake’, or ‘less allergic’ – although some of these are extremely stupid. One said: ‘It’s getting colder. Turn a heater on.’

In August?