Cockatiel parrots are delightful little birds with huge personalities. They also create a tremendous amount of bird dust that is best minimized with an air cleaner. Here are the 5 safest features to choose in your purifier.
The right air purifier is the best and safest way to keep the dust down. An air purifier that has these 5 features indicates that it is both safe and effective.
Numerous Filters For Particles—-Dust is composed of many different sized particles, so a variety of different sized filters is necessary. Pre-filters trap particles that you can see and save the HEPA filter for microscopic filters such as bird dander, bacteria, and viruses.
Carbon cloth is also an excellent filter to have in a cleaner for your bird because it can remove noxious gases, chemicals, and odors that have the potential to be lethal to your pet. And because it is woven like cloth it has the ability to remove additional particulates as well.
No Ozone—The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has determined that any amount of ozone produced indoors is harmful. Unfortunately, in order for ozone technology to be effective the level would need to be so high that it would become deadly. Clean air is great but for most people (smile), that is too high a price to pay..
Split Capacitor Motor-This type of motor allow will allow an air purifier to clean 24 hours a day safely and effectively without needing time to cool off. Make sure the technical specifications of the cleaner have this feature listed.
The advantage to you and your Tiel is that the air is kept clean. This helps prevent your bird’s air passages from becoming clogged. Clear air passages give your bird the best chance of remaining healthy with a high quality of life.
Steel Case—Because you want a unit that can run all the time, you definitely want a case made of steel. Plastic cases often emit noxious fumes when the heat from the motor makes it hot. Steel will not emit noxious odors.
Long-Life Filters—A unit that needs you to go inside to clean, wash, spray, or recharge makes it hard on your bird in several ways. Most importantly, if the unit has to be stopped, particles remain in the air. And anytime the air is not being cleaned the dust is accumulating in the air making the air unhealthy for you and your bird to breathe.
And secondly, having to open the unit for maintenance sends all the pollutants that you were trying to eliminate right back into the air. Opening the unit can send the powdery white stuff right back into the air again.
A cleaner that only needs to be vacuumed on the outside, and that has a filter life of at least 5 years is best. This means maintenance can be performed without any interruption in cleaning, and operation of the unit is only interrupted once every 5 years for the 10 minutes that it should take to change the filter.