I live in an apartment in one of the smoggiest cities in the world. An air purifier makes a huge difference. Unfortunately, it works best if you don't ventilate the flat at all, which of course leads to unhealthy levels of CO2... So it's a game of ventilating enough to get the CO2 out, but not enough to make the flat full of smog. Additionally, the conditions outside differ wildly during the day - when a chimney in proximity to my windows is active, the numbers outside temporarily go up 2-4x, so then it's definitely not a time to ventilate.
Overall, it's a fertile ground for automation, but unfortunately I can't think of cheap ways to automatically open/close windows, so I'm sticking to manual management throught the day for now. My next step will probably be installing central air in the apartment, incl. a central air purifier. This way, the air inside the flat should always be well-ventilated and never reach unhealthy levels. It's a shame that I must invest in expensive and bad for environment technology to protect myself from another shitty technology (burning fossil fuels), but that's unfortunately the current the state of my country.
Overall, it's a fertile ground for automation, but unfortunately I can't think of cheap ways to automatically open/close windows, so I'm sticking to manual management throught the day for now. My next step will probably be installing central air in the apartment, incl. a central air purifier. This way, the air inside the flat should always be well-ventilated and never reach unhealthy levels. It's a shame that I must invest in expensive and bad for environment technology to protect myself from another shitty technology (burning fossil fuels), but that's unfortunately the current the state of my country.