Kevin breaks down five common myths surrounding air purifiers. He clarifies misconceptions, such as the idea that air purifiers weaken the immune system and that air conditioners can do the job of purifying the air. He also shares important insights on indoor pollution levels and offers advice on selecting affordable, effective air purifiers for your space.
Kevin breaks down five common myths surrounding air purifiers. He clarifies misconceptions, such as the idea that air purifiers weaken the immune system and that air conditioners can do the job of purifying the air. He also shares important insights on indoor pollution levels and offers advice on selecting affordable, effective air purifiers for your space.
Get-Fit Guy is hosted by Kevin Don. A transcript is available at Simplecast.
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Welcome back to Get Fit Guy, Kevin Don here for the 111th time. This week I had the worlds shortest email from a listener. So short it was a single sentence long. Call me old fashioned, but I usually start and end emails with some kind of hello and ‘yours sincerely’ kind of vibe. The single sentence was: “What air purifiers do you recommend?”
Well, I can’t say I recommend any, because that would a task, that in order to be fair, would require me to first of all, devise a scoring system which would allow me to analyse the benefits of and compare air purifiers, I would then have to go out and test every air purifier and rank them according to my scoring system. Then and only then could I recommend an air purifier. I hope that makes sense. It should because its deductive logic.
In order to recommend an air purifier, I need to test all air purifiers
I have tested no air purifiers
Therefore, I cannot recommend an air purifier.
So, instead of me making some arbitrary suggestion, which I would never do in this possible world, but cannot rule out another possible state of affairs in another possible world, I will do an episode on some of the common myths about air purifiers. Hopefully that will do.
Myth 1: Air Purifiers Reduce Immunity
So, one of the claims around air purifiers is an informal fallacy. A false comparison. Where people say, playing in the dirt as a kid is good for developing your immunity because it exposes you to germs. Therefore, removing germs, viruses and bacteria from the air will reduce immunity through mechanisms of reduced exposure. This is wrong. Pollutants in the air like dust, pollen and fine particles under 2.5 microns in diameter (what we call PM2.5) penetrate into the lungs and cause irreversible damage which can directly lead to asthma, COPD, lung cancers and many other issues. Air purifiers can reduce the exposure to these pollutants that your lungs undergo and will actually therefore boost your resistance to other issues, rather than reducing it.
Myth 2: There isn’t any pollution indoors, its much worse outdoors
We have all seen headlines in the news about ambient air pollution and how bad it is for us when we sit in traffic or go for a run along the roadside. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, indoor pollutants are typically 2-5 times higher than the concentrations of the same pollutants outdoors. Some of these pollutants like mold, asbestos and petper dander almost exclusively exist indoors. When we consider that most Americans also spend 90% of their lives indoors, in schools, colleges, offices and homes, it is easy to see that this is a big problem. Indoors, we are also affected by air flow. It’s pretty obvious the air flow is better outside at the beach than it is inside a sitting room.
Myth 3: I don’t need an air purifier, I have an air conditioner
Many manufacturers of air conditioners are playing a semantic game with consumers. They have advertisements promising dust free air. The reality is that they come with a filter that will indeed remove the large dust particles from the air, but they wont be able to remove gaseous aerosol pollutants or any PM2.5 particles. Air conditioners are not air purifiers.
Myth 4: Air pollution doesn't affect me, I live in the country and not the city.
As we know, some of the major world cities are very very polluted, so polluted its equivalent to smoking 10 cigarettes a day for non-smokers. At the time of writing this, I went onto www.waqi.info which gives a real time air quality index across the world. I highly recommend you check out your city on the map. The most polluted places on earth were New York City, Mexico City, Kuala Lumpur, Beijing, Mumbai and a whole bunch of other cities, mainly located in China and India. But notably the air quality was also bad in San Diego, a city in Arizona, one in Utah, one in British Columbia and one in Portugal. But, even if you do live in the countryside in Iceland, it doesn't mean you escape any particles from asbestos in the construction, tobacco burning, coal or wood fire heating in fireplaces, carbon monoxide from cooking appliances, cold, chemicals from paints, insecticides or cleaning products. Your indoor air quality can still be poor in the countryside.
Myth 5: Air purifiers are too expensive
Whilst it is true that when these products first crossed over from hospital usage into domestic homes, they were indeed expensive. All technology is. Think about how restrictive in price laptops and cell phones were 30 years ago. Now everyone has them. Air purifiers have also benefitedbenefitted from the global decrease in cost of manufacturing technology products. There are air purifiers I just saw on a google search that do filter out PM2.5 particles and are around 100 bucks. There are HEPA filter purifiers (High Efficiency Particulate Arrestor) which filter out particles even smaller than 2.5 microns, all the way down to 0.1 microns for 200 dollars. They also have activated carbon filters, something very important because HEPA filters only deal with the particles, not gases, which carbon filters address.
I would also recommend that you pay attention to room size, if you are looking at an air purifier. Of course, we all want to save money, but the idea that an inappropriate purifier is better than no purifier is illogical. Aside from that, also look at the air change rate. You can get some purifiers that will clean the air in a 40 sq m room 5 times an hour, but others that will do the same room 12 times in an houra hour. Whilst I dont think the latter is necessary, you should aim for 5 air changes an hour for a room your size.
If you have any questions or would like to just say ‘hi’, please email me on getfitguy@quickanddirtytips.com
Get-Fit Guy is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. Thanks to the team at Quick and Dirty Tips Morgan Christianson, Holly Hutchings, the director of podcasts Brennan Goetchuss and Davina Tomlin. I’m your host, Kevin Don. If you have a question for me, leave me a voicemail at 510-353-3104 or send me an email at getfitguy@quickanddirtytips.com. For more information about the show, visit quickanddirtytips.com, or check out the shownotes in your podcast app