Buying an indoor air purifier

Each year, 3.2 million people die prematurely as a result of indoor air pollution in their homes or office buildings. The World Health Organization (WHO) considers it to be one of the biggest health crises of our time, and 99% of the world’s population breathes air that exceeds its recommendations. How can we protect ourselves from indoor air pollution? Read on to learn more about how a high-quality air purifier with proper filters can help.

The sources of indoor air pollution and their effects on health

The sources of indoor air pollution

Indoor air pollution can come from a variety of sources. Let's start by taking a look at chemical pollution. Humans can contribute to indoor air pollution just by simple, everyday activities, all of which can emit chemical pollution (like volatile organic compounds or VOCs) into your indoor air at home:

• Using common cleaning products
• Smoking
• Cooking
• DIY activities and construction projects, especially with the use of adhesives, paints, and varnishes
• Drying laundry using a dryer
• Using air fresheners and other scented products (including cosmetics)
• Lighting candles and incense
• Pesticide treatments indoors and outdoors
• Using fertilisers

The presence of animals and plants can also contribute to poor air quality and indoor air pollution as well by emitting allergens into your indoor air.

Buildings and furnishings themselves can also be responsible for polluting your indoor air. This is a process called ‘off-gassing’, also known as ‘out-gassing’. It occurs when new furniture and other home furnishings (like couches, wooden furniture, tables, chairs, rugs, and carpets, to name a few) release VOCs – most notably, formaldehyde, a known carcinogen. Off-gassing may occur for several years, but there is no exact timeframe: some products continue to release VOCs into the rooms in your home for their entire lifespan¹ . As you’ll read below, only an air purifier with filters designed to combat VOCs and chemical pollution can prevent the negative effects of off-gassing.

But there is also particle pollution! In rooms, homes, or offices that have poor ventilation, poorly maintained air conditioning units, and/or combustion devices like chimneys, boilers, and wood stoves, air quality can be significantly worse. The state of your air pollution may also be exacerbated by the state of your outdoor air: if you live in a place with high outdoor air pollution, that polluted air can easily become trapped in your home, further worsening your indoor air quality.

Indoor air pollution’s effects on health

Exposure to poor air quality can have deleterious effects on health. Inhaling air pollutants causes inflammation and irritation of the respiratory system, reducing the blood’s capacity to transport oxygen. Furthermore, once air pollutants (especially fine particles such as PM2.5) enter the body via the respiratory tract, due to their small size, they can gain quick access to other organs of the body like the heart and brain. This ultimately increases the risk of several types of cancer (especially lung cancer), respiratory illness and disease like asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), heart disease, stroke, and can even impact mental health.

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The advantages of buying an indoor air purifier

Improve indoor air quality

Purchasing an indoor air filter for your home or office can bring many advantages. First and foremost, the ultimate goal of an air purifier is to improve your indoor air quality in any given room. The best indoor air filters, like those equipped with a HEPA-certified filter, can eliminate all airborne contaminants down to a size of 0.01 μm. This includes all fine particles down to PM0.1 and PM0.01, allergens (dust, pollen, and pet dander), mould and their spores, carbon dioxide build-up, and chemical pollutants like VOCs, even formaldehyde.

Prevent the spread of bad odours

The best indoor air purifiers are often equipped with activated carbon filters, a technology that is extremely effective at removing odours. The bad odours found in your home may come from your kitchen, pets, and cigarette residue/smoke, though odours can be found in other rooms as well. These odours can all become things of the past as your air purifier pulls in these odours, treats them inside the device, and releases odour-free air back into your room. Eoleaf’s high-quality air purifiers, for example, contain 8 different filtration technologies, including HEPA-certified filters and activated carbon filters! Our air purifiers also offer photocatalysis and UV sterilisation technologies in addition to serving as dual air purifiers/ionisers.

Reduce the risk of disease propagation

In addition, an air purifier installed indoors with a medical-grade HEPA filter can protect you from the spread of diseases during epidemics, like the flu, or even during pandemics, like COVID-19. They purify viruses and bacteria alike. If you are an allergy-sufferer, you, too, can experience eased allergy symptoms thanks to your air purifier and its filters which will remove airborne traces of dust and pollen from your room or home. People suffering from respiratory diseases like COPD and asthma also experience marked differences in their symptoms when an air purifier is present in their homes or offices.

How does an indoor air purifier work?

Not all air purifiers and their filters are created equal! The market is chock full of devices containing one, some, or all of the air purification technologies on today’s market of varying quality.

In its simplest form, an air purifier works by pulling in polluted air, treating the pollution inside the device using filters, and releasing the purified air back out into the room. Some air purifiers come with HEPA-certified medical-grade filters and others with ‘HEPA-type filters’ (buyer beware: these air purifiers are not guaranteed to remove all pollutants from your air!). Other pollution-treating technologies as mentioned above may include pre-filters, natural bamboo fibres, activated carbon filters, photocatalysis, UV sterilisation, and ionisation (negative ions). Some high-quality air purifiers contain all of the above – like Eoleaf’s! This makes the breathing air in your home safe from all pollutants.

How to choose an indoor air purifier?