More and more people are now becoming aware of the fact that the air inside your room, your house, or indeed any building, can be and generally is far more polluted than the air outside. Of course if you're living in the open countryside, it will not come as a surprise that the air inside may be up to 10 times more polluted than the outside air. If you're living in a town however, you may tend to think that the air quality outside is just as bad - but that is probably not the case. Although people may give lip service to considering this, very few people actually act. That's quite surprising if you think that we mostly are aware and take great care to ensure that the foods and drinks that enter our body are good, beneficial and nutritious, as opposed to dirty, detrimental and odorous. What is more, since air is the most fundamental requirement for life, it is fairly clear logic that the cleaner or dirtier the air that one breathes is, so our health and well-being will be proportionately. Again this is important proportional to the amount of time we spend indoors.
So it is very good news that there are a variety of air purifiers readily available to help raise the indoor air quality (IAQ) of our living environment. However these different types of air cleaners operate in totally different ways, having their own various advantages and drawbacks. For instance, one that I would not hesitate to recommend is a HEPA air purifier. This has a very effective filter unit through which air is drawn and most particles are removed. If you suffer from allergies perhaps cat dander, hayfever and the like, this may well prove to be very effective in cleaning the particles that you are allergic to out of the air. It could also be incorporated within a ventilation or air-conditioning central system to provide whole house filtration. However, the filter will need cleaning and/or replacing as it gets dirty, odors are not removed, and an electric fan is incorporated within the apparatus which may cause a certain amount of noise, particularly if a smaller room air purifier is purchased.
A nice alternative would be an ionic air purifier or ionizer since this produces a stream of negatively charged ions that have been scientifically proven to uplift the atmosphere, similar to the experience of breathing air beside a waterfall or a similar uplifting natural outdoor environment. They work by producing a stream of negative ions that combine with particles in the air causing them to gain weight and dropped to the ground where they may be vacuum cleaned. Of course as one moves around the room, the dust gets stirred up again and so one will need to vacuum clean the room frequently for this method to be effective.
The UV air purifier certainly a very interesting alternative air purifier and well worth considering. Air is drawn to ultraviolet light which naturally sterilizes the air of harmful particulates. Claims have even been made that it eradicates Bird flu viruses and the like.
There are also other air purifiers such as the electrostatic air cleaner, and the ozone air purifier, and indeed new types of their purifiers are coming available fairly frequently. I would quickly add a word of caution concerning the ozone air cleaners as the controversy over their use of a potentially dangerous gas, ozone, is frequently frowned upon.
Some of the most effective air purifiers are what are termed hybrid purifiers that combine two or more of these types of air purification. A particularly effective hybrid would combine a Hepa air filter with ultraviolet light sterilization as well as providing an ionic air purifying stream of healthy negatively charged ions. Their disadvantages - they tend to be more expensive as you would expect. It is beyond the scope of this article to go into greater depth on the individual types of air purifiers I have mentioned, but I have written and will continue to write further articles to elucidate their functions.
Julian Pollock has had an ongoing concern with health and well-being and most of his life. He is a successful Internet publisher and a regular contributor to Cleanest-Air.com - an online resource with articles on all types of air purifiers and air cleaners, including including Hepa air purifiers, ionizers and ultraviolet air purifiers.
Tags: particle, ventilation, particles, air purifiers, air filter, allergies, viruses, particulates, dirt, air purifier, health, cor, electrostatic air, atmosphere