Home Air Cleaner
The Right Home Air Cleaner
Picking the right home air cleaner for your house might be as important as picking the right medicine. Considering that indoor air pollution easily ranks among the top five environmental health risks, it is understandable why some people would spend thousands of dollars on making sure that their air is clean and safe to breathe.
Generally, there are two types of indoor air pollution – particulate matter and gaseous pollutants. Particulate matter pollution examples include animal dander, dust, and viruses. Gaseous pollutants on the other hand come from combustion. Examples of this include vehicle exhaust and cigarette smoke, as well as certain building materials and adhesives and paint.
The right home air cleaner should be one that can handle the indoor air pollution that’s giving you trouble. Particle removal air cleaners can remove said troublesome particles from the air and do so mechanically or electronically. Mechanically, they employ air filters that capture the particles physically. HEPA filters are a great example of a mechanical home air cleaner. Electronic air cleaners are a little more complicated. A good example would be an electrostatic precipitator, which uses electrostatic attraction to capture charged particles. Both particle removal methods share a disadvantage when it comes to larger and heavier particles. These particles tend to drop from the air and settle down long before they actually reach the filter.
Gaseous pollutant removal can be done using gas-phase air filters through the use of a sorbent, such as activated carbon, which snatches gases and odors right out of the air. Typically, gas-phase filters are designed to only handle one or two specific gaseous pollutants. That means that you need to know what you’re trying to filter out before purchasing one. The limitation of this is that the lifetime of anything that can do that for the home is for the most part, very short.
Some people opt for an Ozone generator, which uses AV light or other methods in an effort to produce ozone. The questionable part is that it needs to make ozone to work – that’s a lung irritant. Concentrations of ozone that do not endanger your lungs actually won’t remove enough pollutants to be effective. Of all the options you have, this is the one that should you should be most wary of. If you haven’t tried everything else, don’t try this one yet.
Of course, before making the purchase, you should first be sure that you need the air filter to begin with. Make sure that the air cleaner that you’re planning to purchase will actually help you – no sense in trying to handle gaseous pollutants with a mechanical air filter, after all. The right home air cleaner could make life – and breathing – a whole lot easier for you. Just make sure you pick the right one.