The Air Quality Index of your home can be 5-7 times worse than the Air Quality Index outdoors. Especially in buildings that are newly constructed, buildings with little to no ventilation, and buildings that are adjoining main roads.
More than 90% of an average human being’s day is spent indoors. With indoor air pollution being as prevalent as it is, the purification of air is something that is on everybody’s mind.
Luckily there are many steps you can take to ensure clean air in your immediate surroundings. The first and foremost step should be to increase the greenery of your surroundings. Indoor plants are great tacklers of air pollution and are an inexpensive way of keeping the air around you clean. Compound that with air purification technology and you’re good to go.
As most people already know, customers in the market for an air purifier are spoilt for choice. There are at least a hundred different types of air purifiers out there, each with a completely different set of features than the others.
While this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it does become quite confusing to zero in on one model and buy it. In this article, let’s break the process down and see what an air purifier has to offer you.
What Does an Air Purifier Do?
An air purifier, quite simply, purifies the air around you.
Using specially designed filters, air purifiers target microscopic allergens, pollutants, and toxins and then systematically remove them.
The air pollutants that are mostly found indoors are;
- Volatile Organic Compounds (From paints, varnish, glues)
- Carbon Monoxide
- Dust and Dander
- Tobacco Smoke and Residue
- Pollen
- Chemical Toxins (From sprays, pesticides)
- Airborne Viruses
- Other bacteria
Each one of these pollutants is typically found indoors and is known to cause adverse effects on health in varying severity.
In severe cases of exposure to these air pollutants, these pollutants have been known to cause cancer, cardiovascular diseases, asthma. In more mild cases, these pollutants are known to cause simple but irritating infections of the eye, skin, throat, etc.
An air purifier [depending on the configuration] can remove up to 99.97% of these pollutants from the air in your immediate surroundings.
With that cleared up, let’s focus on a more pertinent topic.
What to look for while buying an Air Purifier?
Imagine how wonderful it is to be assured that you are surrounded by fresh and pure air at all times. Unfortunately, this assurance is hard to achieve due to the rising levels of pollution in the air which has passed the bay of staying outdoors.
Nonetheless, with the current advancing technology and birth of Air Purifiers, you can stay positive that your family is protected from air-borne diseases while indoors.
The application of Air Purifiers is limitless as they are effective in various environments like Home, Office, Restaurants, and Automobiles. Certainly, there is no room for second thought while considering the option of buying an air purifier. Although, it is very important to know what kind of Air Purifier you need and what quality measures you should be looking at.
Here are some important parameters that are a must to look at while buying an Air Purifier.
CADR (Clean Air Delivery Rate) rating, is a metric that was developed to measure the performance of the air purifiers. It is measured in cubic feet per minute. It reflects the amount of Dust, Tobacco Smoke, and Pollen being removed from the air by an air purifier. Air purifiers with higher CADR are always recommended.
There are two types of purification technologies available in the market. Filter based and filter less. Ionic purifiers and PCO purifiers are categorized as filter less air purifiers and HEPA, activated carbon and electret filter purifiers are categorized as filter based air purifiers.
Power Consumption is an important factor that must be noted. An ideal air purifier will use between 35-55 watts of power. However, power consumption could be higher for specific use cases.
You should always choose brands that produce the least noise. Typically, an air purifier at high speed should produce noise in the range of 45-50 db. Anything beyond could lead to disturbance. Always make sure you check the range in “high fan speed” condition and not low fan speed.
Having a filter change indicator can benefit you much as you would know when you have to change the filters. It is possible to forget about a timely replacement and that could lead to a reduction in the quality of air filtration.
Similarly, the presence of an Air Quality sensor provides you with an indication of the quality of indoor air and the purification efficiency of the air purifier. However, air quality sensors could be of multiple types; particle sensor or laser sensor.
Laser sensors give a high level of accuracy, but it comes with a higher cost.
Most air purifiers typically use low cost sensors to maintain an economical price. Hence, the accuracy of the sensors is questionable on occasions and may go out of calibration very fast.
So, while it is good to have multiple sensors on your air purifier, the readings must be taken with a pinch of salt unless the air purifier has commercial grade highly accurate sensors that are calibrated frequently.
Warranty is a must added feature to ensure that there are no manufacturing faults in the product. You can expect an ideal warranty period of one year which would cover all manufacturing faults and failures.
Always consider the parameters mentioned above to purchase the best and most suitable Air Purifier. You should also know that an Air Purifier with too many features would lead to increased maintenance costs. Balancing between the features and the core technology of the air purifier will deliver you the best results.
Now that you know what to look for, let’s talk about the different kinds of filtration technologies in Air Purifiers.
By now, you have surely found out that there are many, many types of air purifiers on sale in the market. Each offers you a completely different set of features and specifications.
However, in terms of technology, there are four most common types of air purification technologies Air Purifiers are based [there are more as well, but these are the most common ones]. Each type deals with a specific variety of pollutants.
HEPA air purifiers use highly dense paper filters for the purification process. Using these dense paper filters, the air purifier can trap indoor pollutants that are as small as 0.3 microns. HEPA air purifiers are known to filter up to 99.97% of all air pollutants.
HEPA air purifiers are capable of removing air pollutants of size as small as 0.1 microns. However, they are designed to deal with slightly larger particles of size 0.3 microns.
Ionic filtration of the air is done by emitting ions a cloud of charged ions into the air. These charged ions further latch onto all airborne contaminants and force them to fall to the ground or any nearby surface. Thereby, ridding the air of these pollutants. This type of purification process can eliminate components of size 0.01 microns.
Ionic air purifiers can effectively remove pollutants such as allergens, dust and bacteria.
Carbon air purifiers use a special form of activated carbon that consists of millions of tiny pores. The air purifier releases this activated carbon into the air and traps the air pollutants. Each activated carbon surface has many tiny pores that act as perfect receptors to airborne contaminants and thereby remove them.
Activated carbon air purifiers shine best in removing gases, odor and VOCs.
A UV Light air purifier purifies the air by emitting light into its surroundings. An air purifier that uses UV light attacks airborne bacteria and viruses by destroying their molecular DNA structure and then eliminating them from the air.
UV light air purifiers are capable of destroying germs and bacteria of size up to 0.001 micron.
Now, considering the Indian air pollution scenario, the most effective air purifier would be one that can combine multiple technologies mentioned above and comprehensively eliminate air pollutants that are dominant in the Indian environment.
Consider “Coverage Area” of the air purifier to achieve efficient purification
An extremely important consideration you need to think about is the coverage area of the air purifier. If the coverage area of the air purifier closely matches the size of the room then the air purifier will be able to perform 3-4 air change cycles per hour. This is crucial for effective air purification.
When you are selecting an air purifier, it is recommended for you to know the size of the room where you intend to place the air purifier.
When it comes to larger areas such as living rooms/dining areas, it’s always best to buy two or more air purifiers and place them in 2 corners, facing away from the walls, as against 1 mega large air purifier. This just helps in better Air circulation in the room making the purification more effective.
If you are in the market for an air purifier, you already know that there are a large number of options from which you can pick and choose.
However, the most suitable one for Indian air pollution conditions would be one that combines H13 HEPA filter with other suitable filters such as pre-filter, activated carbon, ultraviolet, anti-bacterial filter and ionizer.
The above combination would allow the air purifier to comprehensively deal with various pollutants found in the Indian environment.
Buy The Best Home Air Purifier - Beta 350 HEPA Pure Viral Guard
Atlanta Healthcare’s Beta 350 combines all of the above processes into one air purifier. It has a seven-stage filtration process that combines HEPA, activated carbon, UV light, and ionic filtration to deliver clean air. This air purifier works best in rooms of sizes up to 350 sq ft.
The Beta 350 remains to be one of the best options in the air purifier section, especially for your home. Buy the Beta 350 today to make everyone in your family and home breathe pure.
Reach out to us if you want to know more about Air Purifiers in general or have any questions. Just drop in a note at info@atlantahealthcare.in