Everyone is buying an air purifier these days. The buzz is that the air inside our homes and offices are too polluted for us to breathe and stay healthy. So we need to clean the air we will breathe. But are air purifiers good enough to clean the air? Following is a discussion on the quality of indoor air and whether we require an air purifier or not.
Findings of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
The EPA based in California has been conducting research on air purifiers for years now and their tests have revealed that no air purifier is perfect and there is always some particulate or pollutant in the air that isn’t trapped by the purifier. So no purifier should claim to give you 100% protection. If they do so, they are actually trying to sell you a bluff.
They have also found that it is better to have a central purifier instead of stand alone purifiers in one room of the house. It makes sense that the air you breathe is evenly pure all across the house and not just in one room. And the house should be ventilated properly to help the purifier work better. One thing needs to be remembered here and that is air purifiers are ineffective against a few gases like carbon monoxide or radon. These gases can build up in homes not ventilated properly. They are very harmful and can prove fatal.
The EPA recommends to use HEPA purifiers which ideally should be placed at the centre of the house, if you are using a standalone machine and not the central air purifier. These would cost you anything between $100 to $2000, the price variation largely depending on the difference in capacity of the air purifiers.
Those Who Are Against
There are some who claim that air purifiers do more harm than good as the ionic purifiers release ozone into the air. There are also claims that ionic purifiers are ineffective when it comes to cleaning the air.
Although the argument about the ozone release has some merits to it and needs to be further investigated, but the allegation that the purifiers don’t clean wouldn’t be true. Yes they miss out on a few particulates, but they do clean the air of much of the pollutants.
So we can conclude that overall air purifiers are effective though there might still be options to improve upon the technology to achieve better results.