Humans Are Sensually Disgusting. Your Dungeon or Play Space Needs Air Filters.

Five days of Dyson screenshots from one of the many air filters installed at The Construct. Some days correlate with BDSM scenes. Some days correlate with heavy construction, staining wood, and hanging fiberglass and foam insulation. Guess which is which!

There. I Said It. Humans Are Gloriously, Lustfully, Sensually, Amazingly Disgusting.

Blood. Sweat. Tears. Saliva. Semen. Vaginal discharge. Cum. Lubricants. And don’t forget about all the other assorted excretions and secretions that the human body is capable of producing en masse.

Regardless of whether or not bodily fluids are your kink, virtually every dungeon, kink convention, and play space I’ve ever attended pays special attention to remediate or mitigate bodily fluids. Those same venues may also go as far as to require explicit consent from the rest of the room for any scene that might spread bodily fluids.

Surgical gloves, hand sanitizer, sanitizing wipes, chucks, stretcher pads, drop cloths, sharps containers, and medical-grade cleaning sprays and paper towels are usually available in abundance for scene preparation and cleanup.

Venues with toys and implements that are available for public use usually quarantine those items after a scene, and don’t make those items available for use again until they’ve been sanitized. Furniture is usually sanitized immediately after use, between scenes, and again at the end of the evening.

But What About Air Pollution?

A few weeks ago, I read an enlightening article that compared modern societal indifference to air pollution with historical indifference to water pollution. Unfortunately, I can no longer find the source. But the gist was that, in the 1800s and early 1900s, humans happily drank from the same polluted, untreated water sources that their raw sewage flowed into.

Today, modern humans may scowl at a foul smell like diesel exhaust or manure…but if they can’t smell it, they generally don’t think about it. This is especially true in the United States, where rolling coal is a hobby, and half the population scoffs at wearing masks, calling anyone who expects clean air to breathe a snowflake or a Karen.

Like water pollution of the 19th century, air pollution is prolific, and mostly tolerated by modern humans. Schools, hotels, convention centers, and office buildings have their heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems built by the lowest bidder, and building maintenance budgets usually dictate the purchase of the cheapest filters available in bulk.

For this reason, we built The Construct with air quality in mind. Each room of The Construct utilizes HEPA, MERV 12, or WEB Eco Filters, and we are currently researching the costs to install MERV 17 filters that are capable of filtering viral loads like the Flu and COVID-19.

The standalone Dyson HEPA air filter is visible between the suspension truss legs on the left side of the photo.

Humans Are More Disgusting When They're Dry

Not everything that the human body creates is wet. We can’t forget about shedding!

Shedding of skin cells. Shedding of hair. Shedding of mites. Shedding of dirt and debris captured by sweat. Shedding of dried urine, feces, semen, and vaginal discharge. Flying dust and debris from leather, wood, metal, and rope floggers, whips, canes, and other toys and implements.

All of which gets ground into fine dust, perfectly suited to penetrate the human body’s mucus and cilia protections, which efficiently makes its way into the lungs.

Five days of Dyson screenshots from one of the many air filters installed at The Construct. Some days correlate with BDSM scenes. Some days correlate with heavy construction, staining wood, and hanging fiberglass and foam insulation. Guess which is which!

The screenshots above correlate with five different days in The Construct’s dungeon. Some days are BDSM scenes. Some days are heavy construction, working with plywood, oil-based stains, and fiberglass and foam insulation.

Take a moment to guess which day is which! Answers below…

I’ll be the first to admit that the air quality sensor embedded in Dyson HEPA air filters is far from scientific. But it’s a fairly accurate quantitative indicator of floating debris. Shining a bright, focused light in the same room as the Dyson visibly confirms increased floating debris as its sensor indicates worsening air quality levels.

Drum Roll…

Only two of the five days are BDSM scenes. But those BDSM scenes resulted in worse air quality than the days spent hanging insulation! Multiple air conditioners with WEB Eco Filters were running in addition to the standalone Dyson air filter that was taking the readings from the center of the dungeon.

• Screenshot 1: Construction, cutting and hanging plywood, and staining plywood walls with oil-based stain.

• Screenshots 2 and 3: Multiple BDSM scenes.

• Screenshots 4 and 5: Hanging insulation, and weatherproofing the garage doors.

So…if you run a dungeon or play space, please invest in air filters. While the up-front cost can be quite expensive, I personally believe that the health benefits outweigh the investment. And cleaner, filtered air means that less dusting and cleaning of surfaces is required on a daily basis!

KR, Reify.