The air purifier industry is growing in size every year and it has now become so large that in America 250 million dollars is spent every year for people trying to clean their homes from allergens and dirty air. Many of the people buying these cheap air purifiers are sufferers of asthma or have some kind of allergy.
Below are some of the Top Selling Cheap Air Purifiers available on Amazon.
1. Hunter 30730 2. Hunter 30715 3. Hunter 30245 4. Coway Air Purifier
Some scientific studies have been done but they are not conclusive that air purifiers are 100% sucessful in cleaning the air inside the home. Some higher end air purifiers are used by companies that need very clean sterile environments like computer server rooms.
Server rooms are required to be very clean and free from dust so the servers will not crash . The air cleaners used by these companies are more powerful than the ones you would find sold to consumers.
Is your House Clean?
Air that is inside your house is usually not as clean as the air from outside. Even though outside air has many pollutants from cars, factories and exhaust it usually escapes higher into the atmosphere where it does not irritate people who are breathing the air.
The air inside your house can be dirty due to air conditioners circulating dust and particles around different rooms of the house. Also inside your house there tends to be more areas where moisture can gather and most can grow.
Pets fur that goes into the air can also add to the uncleanliness of the air inside your home. Insects, fleas and ticks can be brought inside to your house from your pet.
Your house tends to collect dirt particles because of the fabrics and upholsteries
contained inside.Pollens can also drift inside from windows and be caught in curtains or couches.
So if humans have been living inside for many years with air purifiers why do we need them now?
Allergies are on the increase and it is hard to know what the cause is, most people believe it is the air pollution caused by our factories, cars and other exhaust emitting activities.
So naturally people are looking for ways to improve the air quality that they breath.
Some cheap air purifiers can reduce the contaminents in the air leaving for a cleaner house. Depending on the size of the air purifier they can be limited to cleaning just one room or a whole house.
Some air purifiers have been tested to do NOTHING and are just a drain of power. So you need to be careful which one you buy.
Sometimes air purifiers are included in air conditioning units and can also be called ‘air cleaners’
The way that they work is by using a filter. They pass the air through the filter which is a mesh that is designed to catch particles that are larger than air which would include, dust, pollen, hairs and other contaminents.
The air is then passed back out the other side cleanr than when it came in .
The filters can be made of cotton , foam and sometimes synthetic fibres. These filters must be cleaned or replaced at regular intervals otherwise they become less effective and can restrict the air flow causing them to be rather useless.
Differnet filters are designed to catch different size particles which certain standards in place measuring the effectiveness of the filters. The Department of Energy(DOE) creates these standards that must be passed before companies can label and sell their air purifiers to these standards.
Different Types of Air Purifiers
1. HEPA ( high efficiency particulate air ) meets the department of energy standard for removing particles from the air. This standard requires that less than 0.03 percent of the particles passed though the filter that are 0.3 micrometers in size are allowed through the filter.
So small particles get stopped and are not allowed through along with of course the larger particles too.
ULPA(ultra low penetration air) is another standard that is even stricter than HEPA.
HEPA filters are commonly used by nuclear power industry and they are one of the more popular standards due to them working.
2. Ozone Generators
These work similar in the way that an ionizing purifier does but they are a little different. An ozone purifier sucks in oxygen and spits out ozone. It does this by exposing normal oxygen molecules to UV light which alters the molecule strcuture turning it into and ozone molecule.
This ozone is claimed to disinfect and deodorize the air.
There is no real evidence that the resulting Ozone lives up to all the claims and excessive ozone can cause things like corrosion to metals.
The EPA has also made claims that excess levels of ozone in the home is unsafe and can cause respiratory problems.
3. Adsorbents
Yes this is spelled correctly it is not ‘absorbents‘. This is a material added to purifier filters supposedly to get rid of odors chemicals and fumes in the air. Adsorbtion is when a substance is trapped on the surface of another substance.
Charcoal is commonly used for this, so for example dust getting caught inside the charcoal and therefore being filtered out of the air making it cleaner.
4. UV light
These use ultraviolet light that is focussed on the air passing through the air purifier. UV light is able to kill certain organisms making them harmless and hopefully unable to cause irritations.
Do Air purifiers really work?
Is there proof? many air purifier companies have appeard in recent years as the market for purifiers has expanded and become popular. Where there is money there will also be misleading information from people trying to get a share of the $$ in the industry.
Some of these groups have been exposed by consumer review magazines and even in some cases the EPA for their products being harmful or simply not doing what they claim to do.
This is a market that is not controlled by the FDA so they are sometimes able to make outrageous marketing claims without the need to back it up with studies.
Some of these products are not effective at removing ANY contaminants from the air. The EPA has also warned consumers about ‘ozone purifiers’ as they may be harmful to peoples health.
Here is a statement from the EPA
“Relatively low amounts [of ozone] can cause chest pain, coughing, shortness of breath, and, throat irritation. Ozone may also worsen chronic respiratory diseases such as asthma and compromise the ability of the body to fight respiratory infections“
Not the best endorsement for ozone purifiers. It is said that all air purifiers emit some small amounts of ozone, although the ones specifically designed to be ozone generators do so at a much larger amount and become harmful to people.
Consumer reports also did some test of major brands of air purifiers and found them to have little to no impact on the amount of clean air they produced.
Although there are many products out there that do not work as advertised there are products that do work. On this site we will be reviewing many brands that are available on the market so you will know which products work and which ones to avoid.
Some of the popular air purifiers advertised on late night televsion are some of the dubios products that were tested and found not to be effective in doing what they were supposed to do
Related links:
http://www.epa.gov/iaq/pubs/ozonegen.html
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/index.htm
http://www.hss.energy.gov/csa/csp/hepa/index.html
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