Air Quality
In our modern, sanitized, well insulated and draft-proof homes, while all may seem clean and fresh the air quality is not necessarily as good and healthy as we may believe.
Airborne particles, toxins and pollutants float around in unseen abundance in every room in the house.
The occupants of our homes breathe that dusty and polluted air for many hours each day and night. It can actually form the root cause of many common respiratory problems and allergies!
What can be done to cleanse the air we breathe indoors?
Air Purifiers
Fortunately, science and technology has come to our rescue in creating small yet powerful, inconspicuous yet effective devices that can purify the air in our homes to a high degree of cleanliness.
These air sanitizing devices come in a variety of shapes and sizes. They can cleanse the air in most situations from small rooms to large open living spaces with a range of power ratings to suit the environment they are situated to operate in.
The best quality air purifiers are designed to filter the air that is drawn through them to remove a wide range of airborne particles and pollutants. These include:
- Dust particles thrown up from carpets, rugs, curtains and furnishings
- Floating pollen that enters every time a door or window is opened
- Mold and other fungi spores
- Building material residue
- Chemical pollutants from household cleaning products and paint
- External pollutants from motor vehicle exhausts, industrial waste, pesticides etc
Why You Need an Air Purifiers
You may believe that because you can't always see the floating toxins in the air in your home, that it's perfectly clean. However, most pollutants are so tiny as to be invisible to the naked eye.
Many pollutants are in gaseous form and can be odorless and undetectable to human senses. Nevertheless, they are almost certainly present in almost all homes and living environments simply because we humans live in them and produce much of the pollution ourselves without even realizing it!
We clean our homes regularly, believing that we are removing most of the dirt and germs, but much of what we think we're cleaning up gets thrown up into the air as the tiniest particles or vapors from cleaning materials. Even regular household dust doesn't all get sucked into our vacuum cleaner bags to be disposed of as a large percentage of it simply gets re-dispersed into the air to settle again later!
Many airborne pollutants can be irritating to our respiratory lining in nasal passages, bronchial tubes and lungs, causing breathing problems over time. Spores of mold and other fungus species can cause allergies, while chemical toxins can lead to a range of respiratory conditions that can severely reduce our capacity to breathe fully as we age.
It is important to breathe air that is free of man-made pollutants and while our bodies are designed to deal with most natural airborne particulates that are found outdoors, our defense systems can be overwhelmed by the unnatural build-up of these same particulates as they become trapped in our efficiently sealed and insulated homes!
What is the Best Air Purifier to Buy?
As a rule of thumb, it is sensible to choose the best quality air purifier that you can afford for your home. It is also important to choose a model that is rated for the size of living space that it will be used for.
Buying a model that is too small or underpowered for a large space will mean that it cannot effectively clean all the air in that space. On the flip side, buying one that is too big or powerful will just waste energy and cost more to run than is necessary.
There are several good quality models that we can recommend for most homes and space requirements. The best of these are given their own dedicated review pages on this website and can be found by clicking the page title links in the list below.
Conclusion
While it is possible to reduce the density of airborne polluting particles and gases from inside the home by keeping windows open to ventilate the building as thoroughly as possible, this is not always possible due to the weather not always being as temperate and helpful as we'd like.
If it is too hot, we close all windows and door to run the air conditioning, which does not filter out airborne pollutants and in most cases actually helps to disperse them around the house!
If it is too cold, we again close all windows and doors to keep the precious heating that we're paying so much for inside the house, again allowing airborne particulates and toxins to build up in density.
In these cases, which are in effect for most of the time, the best solution is to have a good quality air purifier running to sanitize the internal atmosphere of the home and do you and your family members a great service by providing the cleanest air you can for their health and well being!
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