system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
If you are in a 300 AQI area for 5 hours vs a 150 AQI area for 10 hours, are they the same level of harm?

Mathematically, it makes sense that you'd be breathing in the same amount of particles given the two periods of time. I was wondering if this was similar to how the liver functions when responding to alcohol. 

(There is less harm done if you were to drink 1 beer for a month vs if you drank a months worth of beer in 1 day.)
gpt
No.  

Your upper airway basically has a big filter.  It's capable of dealing with a certain amount of particulate in the air.  So, at lower concentrations, nearly all the particulate will be filtered out.  As particulate concentration increases, your "filter" gets overwhelmed, and the amount of particulate reaching the lower airways increases at a non-linear rate.

In other words, twice the particulate can be more than twice as bad.