What reason did you have in purchasing an air purifier? In most cases it was probably in getting relief from some kind of allergy, asthma..or just for clearing the inside air of smoke and odor.
Before you rely and expect on getting cleaner and fresher indoor air from your air purifier, I'd like for you to consider the following issues...and how they relate to your air purifier...
1) What are you sensitive to?...
2) Reducing the concentration of pollutants in your home...
3) The dispersion of the pollutants in the room...
4) The persistence of pollutants...
5) How often is your air being cleaned?..
6) How efficient is your air purifier?
How does this relate to air cleaning benefits from my air purifier?...you may ask.
Each person has their own "tipping point." Personal health and environmental factors make this a moving target. Certain allergens may trigger a reaction today, but not tomorrow. It all relies on your total load and concentration of irritants and physical stresses.
The goal of air purification is to gradually replace contaminants with clean air, keeping them below the threshold at which you get a reaction.
Why dilution?...and not "elimination"? Because particles and gases are not "static", standing still, in order for the air purifier to trap them one by one. Normal particle motion disperses them equally throughout your room air.
Therefore, clean air exiting your air purifier is almost instantly re-contaminated by the still un-cleaned air. You can't hold clean air on one side of the room, while cleaning the air on the other side.
That's the reason why your air purifier should run continuously. Constant treatment reduces airborne pollutants and keeps them at a low level.
Countering air cleaning is the re-introduction of new pollutants. The continuous bombardment of these airborne pollutants is like a leak in a boat. In time the boat sinks. It's the same principle with your indoor air. You need to be one step ahead of these new pollutants.
Just as the boat needs steady bailing to stay afloat, your room air needs continuous cleaning to stay healthy.
This is where ACH, or air changes per hour, comes into play. ACH indicates how fast you can bail your room air of airborne pollutants.
ACH is determined by dividing the cubic feet of cleaned air your air purifier can deliver in one hour by the cubic feet of the room. Say your room is 12 x 16 with an eight foot ceiling. That's 1536 cubic feet (12 x 16 x 8). Say your air purifier is rated to deliver as much as 200 cubic feet per minute (200 CFM) or 12,000 cubic feet over an hour. Dividing 12,000 by 1536 reveals your air purifier can deliver 7.8 air changes per hour in this room.
That air purifier would be an excellent choice for that room. Most experts agree that 6 ACH is needed for those with severe respiratory problems. At least 4 ACH is recommended for typical allergy relief. In any case, never less than 2 ACH for any benefit at all, and then only with the most efficient air purifier.
Which brings us to the issue of "actual" efficiency...not "theoretical" efficiency. Theoretical efficiency is what manufacturers claim their machine can do in based on one hundred percent of filtration. But "actual efficiency is how much of the actual air is drawn through the filter and treated. Not all the air passing through an air purifier may be cleaned. Some may by-pass the filter, or the machine simply can't remove one hundred percent of the particles passing through.
The lower the total system efficiency, the more times the air needs to pass through the air purifier to achieve the same cleaning result as a higher efficiency unit. This is why I recommend using only air cleaners with proven high system efficiency, such as the IQ Air HealthPro air purifiers. They do the job most effectively with HyperHepa filtration, high CFM and room coverage.
There are 2 critical things to consider when measuring how effective an air purifier is. The first performance test is how much air it can clean each hour. The second test is what percentage of the pollutants the air purifier removes from the air that is circulating through it. This second test is called the efficiency.
For example, if the particle count per cubic foot of air going into the air purifier is 1,000,000 particles and the particle count of the air coming out after it has passed through the filters is 300, than the efficiency of the air purifier would be 99.97%. Such, you can see how the efficiency of the air purifier is important, since an air purifier with only a 60% efficiency would allow 400,000 particles to go back into the room. The efficiency rating is important, because there are many air purifiers on the market that have a Hepa filter, but their relative efficiency is undocumented. This only means that the filter has been tested to remove 99.97% of all of the particulates that are 0.3 of a micron in size or larger. However, this is when all of the particles in the air contact the Hepa filter and none of the air is able to bypass the filter itself. Once you take the Hepa filter and install it in the air purifier, other variables are involved. As air is pulled into the air purifier, a portion of the air can bypass the filter media, depending on the way the filter is situated within the air purifier. As much as 35 to 50 percent of the air can by-pass the filter media in some Hepa filter-based air purifiers, resulting in inadequate performance.
I recommend the IQAir series and the Clarifier series as the most efficient Air Purifiers.
There are all kinds of types, shapes and sizes of air cleaners available to you. They range from relatively inexpensive table-top models to sophisticated and expensive whole-house systems. Some air cleaners are highly effective at particle removal, while others, including most table-top models, are much less effective. Most air cleaners do not remove gaseous pollutants.
The effectiveness of an air cleaner depends on how well it collects pollutants from indoor air (expressed as a percentage efficiency rate) and how much air it draws through the cleaning or filtering element (expressed in cubic feet per minute). A very efficient collector with a low air-circulation rate will not be effective, nor will a cleaner with a high air-circulation rate but a less efficient collector. The long-term performance of any air cleaner depends on maintaining it according to the manufacturer's directions.
Another important factor you should know in determining the effectiveness of an air cleaner is the strength of the pollutant source. Table-top air cleaners, in particular, may not remove noticeable amounts of pollutants from strong nearby sources. If you are sensitive to particular indoor pollutant sources, you may find that air cleaners are helpful only in conjunction with your diligent efforts in removing these pollutants.
Over the past few years, there has been some advertising and talk suggesting that houseplants have been shown to reduce levels of some chemicals in laboratory experiments. There is currently no evidence. However, a reasonable number of houseplants remove significant quantities of pollutants in homes and offices. By the way, indoor houseplants should never be over-watered because extremely damp soil may promote the growth of microorganisms which can affect allergic individuals.
At present, the EPA does not recommend using air cleaners to reduce levels of radon and its decay products. The effectiveness of these machines is uncertain because they only partially remove the radon decay products and do not reduce the amount of radon entering your home. The EPA plans to do additional research on whether air cleaners are, or could become, a reliable means of reducing the health risk from radon.
