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What You Need to Know to Choose an Air Purifier

How to Select an Air Purifier for your Home

Whether for allergies or simply as a well-being measure to help improve your indoor air, selecting the right air purifier for your home can be a daunting task.

With so many models available, and lots of air purifier reviews, it can be difficult to choose the best air cleaner for your needs.

Use this guide to select the right size air purifier for your home, the right types of filters, as well as understand the options for air purifier features and specialty machines that are available for unique air cleaning needs.

 

 

Understanding How Air Purifier Filters Work

The most important component of any air purifier is the filter. Many air purifiers have numerous filters to improve the air cleaning performance. Here are a few of the most important for effective air cleaning.

Air Purifier Filter

True HEPA filters

This is a must-have feature for any air purifier purchase. The best HEPA filter air purifier safely removes 99.97% of airborne particles as small as 0.3 microns, including pollen, ragweed and other allergens, viruses, germs, dust mites, mold spores, pet dander and cigarette smoke. Selecting an air purifier with this filter ensures the highest performance for cleaning indoor air. Anyone with allergies will also find the True HEPA helpful for reducing the symptoms during allergy season.

Treated filters

If you are looking for extra clean air, you can choose HEPA filters with antimicrobial treatment. These special filters provide built-in protection from the growth of odor-causing bacteria, mildew, and fungi on the True HEPA filter itself.

Carbon filters

Though not necessarily cleaning the air, a carbon filter air purifier is great for reducing household odors. It's perfect for any location in the home where odors tend to occur regularly. A carbon air purifier is especially useful for a baby's room, where dirty diapers leave their trademark scent. You may want to look for an air purifier with both True HEPA and carbon filters in the same machine.

Determining Air Purifier Room Size

Often air cleaners are selected based entirely on price. But this can be deceiving, and probably disappointing when you find out that the air purifier you purchased doesn't seem to be performing as well as you thought. Smaller air purifiers may be less expensive, but may not clean the air in the room size you have at home. Be sure to measure the space where you want to use your air purifier so you can make the best choice in terms of coverage for air purification in your desired area.

Room Size Guidelines

Baby Air Purifier

Other Air Purifier Features to Consider

If allergies or concerns about cold and flu are a key reason for your air purifier purchase, then be sure to look for special allergy features on your air purifier. The Aera+ Mode on AeraMax Air Purifiers helps amp up the overall air purifier performance for cleaner air during allergy or cold and flu season. Another important feature allergy sufferers may look for is quiet performance, as allergy sufferers often run air purifiers while they sleep.

Filter change indicators are also a great feature to help maintain clean air filters without having to continually check inside the machine. An indicator light simply tells you when it is time to get a new filter. This feature is especially helpful for air purifiers that run continuously.

 

Sources

1. An Introduction to Indoor Air Quality (IAQ). United States Environmental Protection Agency. Last modified July 9, 2012. //www.epa.gov/iaq/voc.html

2. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2013) "droplet nuclei" Resource Library; Glossary of Epidemiology Terms, Washington, D.C //www.cdc.gov/excite/library/glossary.htm

3. Pyrek, Kelly M. (2013). "Studies stir new debate about influenza virus size, transmission risk, PPE use" Retrieved November 19, 2013, from //infectioncontroltoday.com

See also

Why Purify Your Indoor Air

AeraMax - The Auto-Detecting Air Purifier