This article reminds me of the time when I told someone from the tech/rationality community that I was working for a consumer health tech startup that was focused on women's fertility and menstrual health. I was helping to design the UX of the product that had to do with the actual tracking of their cycles and their health. My friend had a reaction that was quite typical of most people I talked to, but it's one that I've kept around as an example of what not to do;
is this, like, very, and truly, *the* best thing you can do with your time? like, back-of-the-envelope: what is the amount of money women spend on keeping track of their periods? like, the savy of them buys a $.5 notepad, and circles the dates?
At the time I was shocked that he didn't even realise that this was a problem, but it was actually that lack of empathy that made me realise that a lot of people in the tech community don't actually think about some of the more germane problems facing the lives of 50.5% of the population --- it was quite eye-opening for me. Our schemas were so different that I found it quite difficult to explain why this mattered. Sure, I could go over the normal talking points - a) everyone's periods are different and they are often different every time, b) there are tons of possible complications and you can get into a world of hurt over the slightest variations in the hormonal cycle, their genetics, and the health of their ovaries, uterus, or even vagina, and c) it wasn't that easy to catch these while they were happening and women most often discovered issues the hard way. Ergo, giving women a map to their bodies - no matter who they are or where or how they were born - would give them a greater sense of control over their lives. But he - and a lot of other folks - just wouldn't get it.
Maybe, finally, seeing the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow will get more people interested in these problems and talk to the women around them about it?
To play devil's advocate: such dismissals are common to hear for all kinds of ideas/products. People are often not familiar or dismissive towards problems facing people other than them.
Ok, but he explicitly tried to frame it as men "lacking empathy" for women, when it's just another case of someone out of touch with the target demographic.
I'm a woman, and this raises another point. People get really, really weird about this. Especially if you try to talk about it.
Also, women aren't just a target demographic. We're 50.5% of the population. And that's kinda the point. This isn't just inside baseball --- it's literally half of all humanity!
Not to brush this off in particular, but there are quite a few target demographics that are more than "half of all humanity". For example, people who use toilets.
You see this with everyone who has no exposure to a type of person. “How many people actually stand in LINE to buy sneakers?” “How many people are ACTUALLY going to vote for that clown?” Etc
I’ve made progress informing people quite plainly that, over time, the data of an irregular period is an early indicator of a number of life-changing health conditions. But I agree that people are most geared towards seeing that if something has monetary worth than it’s undeniable it has innate worth. Empathy doesn’t have to be engaged then.
Is the implication that people who don't lack empathy consider the problems of 100% of the population? Because that's obviously and demonstrably false.
I'm arguing that it's meaningless to try to pick a demographic that a non-empathetic person can relate with...since by definition, they struggle with that very skill across the entire population.
That $.5 notepad can handle all 3 of your talking points, and it comes with privacy. (read the recent HackerNews article about DNA info being secretly shared if you can't see the problem)
Getting fancy, you can buy nice charts with colorful status stickers. Minus the stickers, you can print the charts on any printer. All of this is private.
No, it can't. And you're missing the point of why we're doing this. Such kind of tracking is powerful not because it helps you keep track of what happened, but what could happen. There are patterns that humans can't easily discern that correlate with everything from ovarian cysts to endometriosis --- detecting the problem early on, gives people a better, longer life in the long run, and prevents potentially fatal complications in the case of pregnancy.
What you're saying is exactly like a logistics company saying - why should we enter our logs into this computer? What's the point? A pen and paper seem to work just fine... We all know how that story turned out. This story is playing out with women's lives instead of efficiency points/dollars in the global economy (though at some level it does map to do that as well), and real people are suffering as a result. They deserve better.
I think you are being dismissive of a solution that you can't datamine. The privacy violation is real, unless you made an app without any kind of network permissions.
Hint for those watching: HIPPA doesn't apply to self-gathered self-entered data, and there are many (insurance companies, drug companies, diaper services...) who would love to know this data.
There are patterns that humans can't easily discern that correlate with everything from ovarian cysts to endometriosis
That's the thing: us from the outside don't know this (particularly men, but I'm guessing many women as well). But we do know that over-engineering is an endemic problem in our industry, including in the healthcare area. So the question seems fair, because we don't want to see people's health being exploited by selling them useless stuff. Because those abound. It's always the makers/sellers' job to show that their thing is useful.
A pen and paper seem to work just fine... We all know how that story turned out.
No, not all of us know. People - even those in the logistics space - still ask that question today. As someone who helped develop such solutions, educating people was part and parcel of our business.
There's a math error even assuming your premise is true. There are 3.75 billion women on this world. Even limiting it to women with smartphones, there are over a billion of them. If each of them is currently spending $0.50 on a notepad (again, we're assuming your premise is true even though it's not), that's a $500M market. Not bad.
It's recurring revenue also. Eventually all of them will run out of space in the notepad and have to buy a new one. It might take years if you assume a page a month but maybe with clever marketing you can get some percentage of users to upgrade to luxury $5 notepads. That's 10x revenue per user!
Clicking on "Balance Sheet" on that archive.is link took me to (what seems to be) a malicious website. Can you please double check and take it down just in case?
I don't see the same. It is a link to another archive.is page (although it doesn't really function like it should). You may have malware installed on your machine which is hijacking links.
> I have never heard of anything like that happening in the US before 2015. Could you give me some examples of this happening?
Okay. Here's a quick timeline of related incidents where the ISP has modified someone's access to information - it includes an ISP blocking information about a labor strike against the company;
"""
TELUS: In 2005, Canada’s second-largest telecommunications company, Telus, began blocking access to a server that hosted a website supporting a labor strike against the company. Researchers at Harvard and the University of Toronto found that this action resulted in Telus blocking an additional 766 unrelated sites. http://thetyee.ca/News/2005/08/04/TelusCensor/
WINDSTREAM: In 2010, Windstream Communications, a DSL provider with more than 1 million customers at the time, copped to hijacking user-search queries made using the Google toolbar within Firefox. Users who believed they had set the browser to the search engine of their choice were redirected to Windstream’s own search portal and results. http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/10/04/05/phone-company-h...
PAXFIRE: In 2011, the Electronic Frontier Foundation found that several small ISPs were redirecting search queries via the vendor Paxfire. The ISPs identified in the initial Electronic Frontier Foundation report included Cavalier, Cogent, Frontier, Fuse, DirecPC, RCN and Wide Open West. Paxfire would intercept a person’s search request at Bing and Yahoo and redirect it to another page. By skipping over the search service’s results, the participating ISPs would collect referral fees for delivering users to select websites. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/08/update-paxfire-and-sea...
That's a flawed argument as the level of abstraction matters. We can route around FB and Google. Direct message each other through Signal, Telegram, or just setup our own email servers. We can't do that if the ISP inspects our packets and refuses to send them no matter how we send them.
What are you going to do when Comcast decides that hey let's charge $50 more for VPNs and another $4.99 for messaging apps (pre-approved of course)? What will you do when Signal or Telegram aren't on that list due to "security" concerns? What will you do if an ISP decides that all encrypted traffic is bad and decides to create whitelisted exceptions?
> We can't do that if the ISP inspects our packets and refuses to send them no matter how we send them.
VPN
> What are you going to do when Comcast decides that hey let's charge $50 more for VPNs
You can't charge "for VPNs" - VPN traffic is just encrypted traffic. Comcast can charge more for encrypted traffic, but that would be completely insane, ruinous for business and Comcast won't ever do it because that would be insane. And of course, it didn't do it until 2015, because it'd be insane. And if they were insane enough to do this, I'd just use AT&T or Verizon or T-Mobile or whatever there would be around. Of course, I won't actually have to do any of that because Comcast is not going to do this insane thing.
> and another $4.99 for messaging apps (pre-approved of course)
Comcast doesn't approve apps, in fact Comcast has no idea what am I running and whether there are such thing as "apps" on the OS that I am running. But many mobile providers do provide free traffic for certain messaging apps. I've used it when traveling overseas, very useful to send my wife a message "I've landed, everything's fine" without having to pay for a whole daily internet package that I am not going to use. Of course, from NN point of view it is an outrage that must be banned. I fail to see why. And of course, 2015 regulations didn't prevent that from happening either.
> What will you do if an ISP decides that all encrypted traffic is bad
Wake up? Why invent scenarios that everybody knows would never happen? ISPs had 30 years until 2015 to do it, and we were fine. But now of course suddenly they all go crazy and start destroying their own business because they want $4.99 from you.
> Wake up? Why invent scenarios that everybody knows would never happen? ISPs had 30 years until 2015 to do it, and we were fine. But now of course suddenly they all go crazy and start destroying their own business because they want $4.99 from you.
Some form of the scenarios I've outlined have indeed happened in the past. From folks trying to ban competitor's emails to attempts to block specific applications and traffic types at every level. Also if China can block VPNs then I'm sure Comcast can figure it out too;
Here's a quick timeline;
"""
MADISON RIVER: In 2005, North Carolina ISP Madison River Communications blocked the voice-over-internet protocol (VOIP) service Vonage. Vonage filed a complaint with the FCC after receiving a slew of customer complaints. The FCC stepped in to sanction Madison River and prevent further blocking, but it lacks the authority to stop this kind of abuse today. http://news.cnet.com/Telco-agrees-to-stop-blocking-VoIP-call...
COMCAST: In 2005, the nation’s largest ISP, Comcast, began secretly blocking peer-to-peer technologies that its customers were using over its network. Users of services like BitTorrent and Gnutella were unable to connect to these services. 2007 investigations from the Associated Press, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and others confirmed that Comcast was indeed blocking or slowing file-sharing applications without disclosing this fact to its customers. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2007/10/eff-tests-agree-ap-com...
TELUS: In 2005, Canada’s second-largest telecommunications company, Telus, began blocking access to a server that hosted a website supporting a labor strike against the company. Researchers at Harvard and the University of Toronto found that this action resulted in Telus blocking an additional 766 unrelated sites. http://thetyee.ca/News/2005/08/04/TelusCensor/
AT&T: From 2007–2009, AT&T forced Apple to block Skype and other competing VOIP phone services on the iPhone. The wireless provider wanted to prevent iPhone users from using any application that would allow them to make calls on such “over-the-top” voice services. The Google Voice app received similar treatment from carriers like AT&T when it came on the scene in 2009. http://fortune.com/2009/04/03/group-asks-fcc-to-probe-iphone...
WINDSTREAM: In 2010, Windstream Communications, a DSL provider with more than 1 million customers at the time, copped to hijacking user-search queries made using the Google toolbar within Firefox. Users who believed they had set the browser to the search engine of their choice were redirected to Windstream’s own search portal and results. http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/10/04/05/phone-company-h...
MetroPCS: In 2011, MetroPCS, at the time one of the top-five U.S. wireless carriers, announced plans to block streaming video over its 4G network from all sources except YouTube. MetroPCS then threw its weight behind Verizon’s court challenge against the FCC’s 2010 open internet ruling, hoping that rejection of the agency’s authority would allow the company to continue its anti-consumer practices. http://www.wired.com/2011/01/metropcs-net-neutrality-challen...
PAXFIRE: In 2011, the Electronic Frontier Foundation found that several small ISPs were redirecting search queries via the vendor Paxfire. The ISPs identified in the initial Electronic Frontier Foundation report included Cavalier, Cogent, Frontier, Fuse, DirecPC, RCN and Wide Open West. Paxfire would intercept a person’s search request at Bing and Yahoo and redirect it to another page. By skipping over the search service’s results, the participating ISPs would collect referral fees for delivering users to select websites. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/08/update-paxfire-and-sea...
AT&T, SPRINT and VERIZON: From 2011–2013, AT&T, Sprint and Verizon blocked Google Wallet, a mobile-payment system that competed with a similar service called Isis, which all three companies had a stake in developing. http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/11/12/15/top-10-ways-car...
These are just some of the abuses that the FCC has interfered with and circumvented in the past. I can't predict the future but I do believe that past behavior is indicative of future results.
Again, do you want to take the gamble that the honorable ISPs won't abuse their position of power to make everyone in the value chain pay out of their nose and threaten our industry's future growth?
> As you say, all fixed without needing net neutrality.
They were enforcing their policy of net neutrality. After the courts struck these regulatory options down, the FCC adopted the Title II order to continue enforcing net neutrality.
None of the examples you have brought has anything to do with blocking freedom of speech, etc. - except maybe TELUS case which happened in... the same Canada we now praising as being so much better than US?... But even this looks more like business dispute than anything else - though I agree that their actions were both stupid and despicable (and FCC couldn't do anything about it because FCC has no authority in Canada...)
Yes, ISPs have attempted to block apps like BitTorrent because they use tons of bandwidth and ISPs oversell bandwidth, it is a known thing. Has zero to do with freedom of speech. And, of course, they did it in secret for a very simple reason - once this is known, they got their asses kicked by both customers and FCC. Pre-2015.
AT&T case isn't even related to NN - Apple routinely blocks apps competing with their services, and NN has nothing to say about it. That's what you get for choosing closed garden ecosystem.
Summarily, I see a bunch of instances where ISPs blocked services which competed with their own or overtaxed their networks, and got a rebuke from FCC. One case where it looks like genuine attempt at suppressing speech, and it happened in Canada. But ok, I grant you this - instead of "no examples in 30 years" we can say "one example in 30 years". Maybe you could find more, and we could have an example of some stupid ISP trying it every 2 years or so and getting their hands slapped. Hardly a case for introducing sweeping new regulations, and hardly a case to predict collapse of the whole internet if the regulations return to "once every 2 years, hands slapped" situation? What would you think would have happened under 2015 regs anyway? Just the same - once per 2 years, somebody would try something and get their hands slapped. You already have it.
> Also if China can block VPNs then I'm sure Comcast can figure it out too;
Pol Pot figured how to kill millions with common hoes, and Stalin figured out how to put millions in gulags in Siberia. That's not the reason to proclaim Comcast would do the same. Would they try some shenanigans now and then, to gain upper hand competing against other ISPs or trying to adjust to new and creative usage of their networks? Surely they will. And if they try something shady, the same thing would happen that happened in 2005. BitTorrent is still alive, and so is Comcast. Somehow it worked out, despite it being 10 years before the light of Obama shined on all of us. I am sure we'll be fine in 2025 too, and Comcast won't take our freedom of speech and won't put any of us in gulag for using BitTorrent or Tor or VPN.
Notice how almost none of the service areas intersect? Internet competitiveness in the US is measured by census zones, and they know that. So they carve up territory block by block, allowing them to be engage in "competition" without competing. (https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/isps-dont-want-t...)
> Will there be ISPs that offer packages that we have now? (I.E bandwidth only restriction)
Cynically? Market segmentation. Segment the market into sub-communities along demographic lines as well as producers and consumers. Figure out how to charge both small businesses trying to start a shopify store and the consumers who're likely to visit them.
> How will ISPs decide what websites I can not visit? Will they have a whitelist/blacklist?
If they don't have to treat all traffic passing through their lines equally, then they can choose to downgrade traffic from say Google unless El Goog pays up the fee. And, probably, ask you to pay up too.
> Will there be ISPs that offer packages that we have now? (I.E bandwidth only restriction)
To quote myself;
What makes you think they won't take full advantage of the power that you've given them? Once you give them that power, do you think they won't use it to make more and more? To squeeze every last dime from your pockets?
What makes you think that these rent seekers won't extract their pound of flesh and then some from you and your customers?
After all, past behavior is indeed predictive of future results.
> I've seen good arguments both for and against net neutrality and I really don't know which would be better.
When all else fails, go with enlightened self interest. Do you really want to pay some "ISP-fee" in the future to start your startup? Do you think consumers will be able to find your company or bother to do so if they have to pay $5 extra for the privilege of seeing your website?
It's in everyone's enlightened self interest over here to oppose this, because in the long run it will kill the consumer internet as we know it.
> The government lined up 50 random people and executed them, to appease a foreign government that was holding 500x people captive. We're talking houses vs houses, not people vs people, but how is the morality different? Scape goat. Since it is property, the engineers probably assumed they'd be sued, and I bet they knew exactly what they were doing, and it was still cheaper than the alternative.
I feel that the central thesis of your comment that the government is this faceless entity that has decided through force to violate lives and is thereby reprehensible to be something that's counter to the facts of the matter and the case at hand.
From the article, it quickly becomes clear that they were trying to avoid catastrophic failure by diverting water to a historic food plain;
> “If we don’t begin releasing now, the volume of uncontrolled water around the dams will be higher,” Colonel Lars Zetterstrom, the Corps’ Galveston district commander, was quoted as saying. “It’s going to be better to release the water through the gates directly into Buffalo Bayou.” The danger was that the water would flow uncontrolled into homes located upstream from the reservoir, crest the reservoir walls downstream, or crack a section of the Barker dam that was under repair. Had either dam failed, the Houston Chronicle later wrote, West Houston would have been left with “a week of corpses by the mile.”
In one cases, the failure would have been sudden and would have killed an unforeseeably large number of people. In another, they could act to preserve lives, but damage property that can be later rebuilt. They chose the latter, and I believe this was the most moral and correct response to the situation at hand.
Why aren't these people heroes for making this call? The Government in this case acted exactly as it should; as an entity that is meant to be representative of and beholden to its citizens and chose an action that preserved the lives of citizens over arbitrary property value that can be repaid through other means.
There is no version of this scenario that plays out well for anyone at all, but the fact that they minimized harm while reducing the risk of catastrophic failure shows that the system does work as intended. After all, homes can be rebuilt, but as far as I can tell, people can't be brought back from the dead.
Except the argument isn't about the frequency of storms nor the occurrence of a severe storm, but the increase in frequency of severe storms. Essentially, if we put more energy into the system, then we shouldn't be surprised if more energy is outputted as a result of the same system.
> A sustained upward trend is found between the global proportion of Cat 4–5 hurricanes and ACCI (Fig. 4), balanced by a similar decrease in Cat 1–2 hurricanes. The results are independent of the choice of models to calculate the ACCI as can be seen by comparing Fig. 4a and b. In both cases the ACCI explains 80–85 % of the variance in the smoothed annual hurricane proportions with p < 0.01 (using unsmoothed data). This finding is consistent with the SST-related increases in Cat 4–5 and decreases in Cat 1–2 found by Kishtawal et al. (2012), the relationship of intense hurricanes with SST found by Hoyos et al. (2010), and the Atlantic landfall hurricane changes noted by Grinsted et al. (2012).
b) Parts of Houston are sinking due to subsidence: water is being removed and the land above sinks. 3-10 feet doesn't seem to be a lot until the wave hits your front door:
c) Private developers have very short-term goals: they buy cheap lowland, build homes on it, and sell them in good weather at high prices. Once they're sold out, the developers' obligations cease and the problem passes to local authorities and FEMA.
FEMA should not sell insurance for areas likely to flood. [well, they don't, but they need to extend the no-sell areas even further] The cities, counties and state have power to ban development in low-lying regions but are susceptible to fraud and bribery. Developers are very wealthy men who are politically connected. Homebuyers are like sheep: naive and herd-like. They aren't very wise politically.
I know someone in Houston whose house has been flooded seven times. Last year he bought no flood insurance. He's out of a house but expects some governmental entity to buy him out. For him its a way of life; for me, a flood is "nature's way of telling you something's wrong":
And that's pretty pointless, because it is clear that while there is seasonable variation in the frequency of occurrence of storms; the shift in the frequency of intensity is a phenomena that's a global event happening at scale. The global weather system goes through a series of cold and warm cycles, but the mean has been shifting for a while that has had a global shift in the frequencies of different storm strengths being seen around the world;
> However, storm frequencies during the current warm phase (since 1995) have also been much higher than during the previous warm phases in the middle of the last century. The difference can no longer be explained by natural fluctuation; rather, this difference must be attributed to global warming.
After making this rather thorough argument (reproduced here in its entirety because it is important to pay attention to the nuances of the science);
> In addition, for climate variables, recent studies (e.g. Lehmiller et al. 1997; Bove et al. 1998; Maloney and Hartmann 2000; Elsner, Jagger, and Niu 2000; Goldenberg et al. 2001; Landsea 2005; Sutton and Hodson 2005) have attributed Atlantic hurricane activity increases to a natural climate cycle, termed the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), and the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). In recent decades, Geo Risks Research has undertaken hurricane frequency analyses that account for the AMO. The AMO index is a detrended (anomaly) measure of sea surface temperatures (SSTs) (e.g. Knight et al. 2005) and is believed to be capable of explaining the recently elevated levels of hurricane activity. Because it is a measure of SST anomalies, which are correlated with hurricane activity, the AMO index has been used to predict near-term hurricane activity. Therefore, warm phases in the AMO (positive AMO index) are theorized to lead to higher SSTs and above long-term average hurricane activity in the Atlantic. Conversely, cool phases in the AMO (negative AMO index) are theorized to lead to lower SSTs and below long-term average hurricane activity.
> One of the most important recent papers on this topic is the article by Elsner et al. (2008), who consider a time-series model to forecast the average hurricane-season Atlantic SST and then use a linear Poisson regression model to forecast North Atlantic hurricane intensity given the predicted coefficients of the Atlantic SST model.
> However, some studies (Knutson and Tuleya 2004; Barnett et al. 2005; Emanuel 2005; Webster et al. 2005, 2006) indicate that global climate change (rather than natural climate cycles) may play the dominant role. In addition, the fourth status report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC 2007) highlights the significant link between human-induced global warming and the greater frequency and intensity of unanticipated tropical cyclone events.
> Figure 1 clearly shows that the average number of destructive major hurricanes is significantly higher in the warm phases of the AMO than in the cold phases. This finding supports the theory that hurricanes form over warm sea surfaces. However, storm frequencies during the current warm phase (since 1995) have also been much higher than during the previous warm phases in the middle of the last century. The difference can no longer be explained by natural fluctuation; rather, this difference must be attributed to global warming. Based on these U.S. Hurricane Risk Measurement 3 opinions, the modeling of hurricane activity should have the ability to additionally capture the time trend of hurricane activity to illustrate the phenomenon that hurricane activity increases with time because of global warming.
Texas isn't the only place on Earth where this phenomena is playing out. And you may downvote me, but that doesn't change the data nor the facts.
At the beginning of your post, you mention the 12 year gap as a result of seasonal variation between cold and warm cycles. Then your source points out that the current warm phase has been going on since 1995.
I don't understand the point you're making. Also to be clear, your statement;
> Harvey was the first cat3+ hurricane to hit the US in 12 years.
is patently false, because in that time period we've had (and I'm including 2005);
Katrina Cat. 5 (2005)
Rita (2005)
Wilma (2005)
Ike Cat. 4 (2008)
Sandy Cat. 3 at peak (2012)
I didn't bother to correct you earlier, because Cat. 3+ hurricanes hitting the US are more or less a very narrow set of data points. When you view the system globally and at sea, start counting the total number of hurricanes, and add up the data, then the trend becomes quite clear.
I feel that such cherry picking doesn't befit our discussion. Because we can argue passionately over this and one of us might convince someone else that we're right, but at the end of the day - either way - nature can't be fooled. Nature can't be lobbied against. Nature doesn't care about PR firms. Nature can't be reasoned against. Nor can the law of thermodynamics.
We have put a large amount of energy into the global system. We can now argue with the laws of man whether this is reasonable or not, but we can't argue against the laws of thermodynamics.
The data is clear. There's something going on and the mean frequency of intensity has increased. And we have a relatively solid understanding of why this has happened - which can be wrong, but the balance of probabilities right now is that our theory is correct. You can call BS all you want, but that doesn't change the science. That doesn't change the facts at hand.
He specifically mentioned hitting the US. Ike hit Texas as a Cat 2 storm, Sandy hit the east coast as a Cat 2 storm. Their peaks (4, 3) were out in ocean/sea waters near the island nations. Of course, you don't have listen to me or the weather people who repeatedly say that storms have not increased in frequency or intensity (beyond their normal cycles) [0].
Have I made the claim that it increases the frequency of occurrence? I feel that link is a red herring and obfuscates reality. What I, and all of the papers above, have been referring to is the frequency of intensity of storms. NOT the frequency of storms.
Other than the graphs I've already pasted, the phenomena shows up over and over again in the power dissipation index;
> Of course, you don't have listen to me or the weather people who repeatedly say that storms have not increased in frequency or intensity (beyond their normal cycles) [0].
First of all, the graph you linked to only mentions the frequency of occurrence. It does not include intensity. Second, I trust well sourced papers featuring replicable research by scientists published in notable peer-reviewed journals over random people on Twitter.
A lot of air purifiers come with activates carbon pre-filters that should take care of most volatile organic compounds. I'm not sure how effective they are in practice but this paper suggests that activated carbon is used in aqueous solutions to remove PAH; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26820781
So you're probably better off than not buying one of these things
"In order to be effective, the activated charcoal filter would have to be a minimum of five pounds to have any statistically significant effect, he said."
