ClearFlite Air Purifiers

Allergies and Air Purifiers

Thu, 20 Jul 2006 10:44:38 -0400

Employing air purifiers for the relief of allergies is just one aspect of getting ready for a new season. The coming of spring is often a mixed blessing to the vast numbers of Americans who suffer from allergies. We’re glad that the hard, cold days of winter are over, but have little enthusiasm for the coming months of sneezing, wheezing, and difficulty breathing. Most people procrastinate about preparing for the season so that it hits them with a vengeance and only then do they remember. If you had allergies last year, there is a pretty good chance you will this year as well. Using air purifiers alone will help but a more holistic approach will help even more with your allergies. While air purifiers can help while you are in your home you must be prepared to face the pollen and pollution outside.

The following are tips on preparing your life, your home, and your work environment for allergy season. It is especially important not to procrastinate if you have children with allergies. Children have a tough time as it is concentrating in school when the weather gets nice outside. When you add the difficulties from allergy symptoms, and the medications that may need to be taken, it can be especially hard for them to do good work in school.

Get started right away, even if there is snow on the ground. Make an appointment with your doctor or allergist. Evaluate the efficacy of the medicines you took last allergy season and with your doctor, plan a strategy for this season. Get your written Allergy Plan together. Many insurance companies (such as Anthem) provide calendars with month to month tips on addressing these problems. Get your insurance provider and your doctor to send you everything they have. A phone call is easy to make. It’s especially important that you understand your doctor’s strategy for long term control and for quick relief. They may be different medications. Review the filter life of your air purifiers and if need be change them.

If you are planning spring or summer vacations, get on the internet and check out the weather and pollen conditions for the places you are intending to visit at www.weather.com . Integrate these into your Action Plan. Don’t let an attack ruin your vacation, simply because you forgot to plan for it and to take the appropriate medications with you.

Be ready by the first day of spring. Get into gear and get your home into shape as an oasis for breathing. There was a good reason people did major spring cleaning in the olden days. During the closed-up winter days, the home becomes heavy laden with dust and dirt, dust mites in all those warm, wooly clothes and bedding, pet danders and allergens, smoke, soot, and ash from fireplaces and woodstoves, mold from closed up spaces, chemicals from all the grooming and cleaning products used, and viruses and germs to boot. Get your home, furnishings, bedding, carpets, upholstery, and clothes cleaned up. Do the same with your office if at all possible.

Most importantly, if you smoke, STOP! If you work around smokers, throw a fit and make them stop doing it around you. Second hand smoke is poison to allergy sufferers, and horrible for babies and children.

Once you’ve cleaned up your act, keep it clean with room air purifiers in key areas of your house. The bedroom is undoubtedly a key area. Many allergy sufferers experience attacks in the middle of the night, because the human respiratory system relaxes during sleep. Things you can handle during the day, will be more traumatic at night. You’ll want to keep a good room air purifier running in your bedroom 24 hours a day with the door closed if at all possible. You want to sleep in the cleanest room possible. It will help you survive the daytime.

Decide where else in the house you or your family spends a majority of time, and select a room air purifier large enough to adequately cover that space. If you do lots of cooking or grilling on an indoor grill, you may want an air purifier for your kitchen that can absorb chemicals.

With the plethora of allergy air purifiers on the market, which one do you choose? It helps to know specifically what you’re allergic to. However, if you’re not sure, but just know that you can’t breathe easily during certain parts of the year, the vast majority of allergy doctors recommend HEPA allergy air purifiers. HEPA filters were developed by NASA years ago for use in the space shuttle. HEPA means High Energy Particulate Arresting. That means it sucks up the pollens and stuff flying around in the air. Many companies sell HEPA air purifiers, some much better in quality than others. The best have 5-10 year warranties on the machines themselves. HEPA filters have to be changed. When you throw one out you’ll be amazed at how despicable they are and you’ll be very glad you didn’t breathe all that stuff.

Other types of allergy air purifiers use ionization or electro-static technology to absorb the particulate. These can be very helpful, but HEPA is still the best way to go to get the vast majority of pollutants and toxins out of your air. Stay away from air purifiers based on ozone generation technology. Consumer Reports says "ozone generators should not be where people are." Grammatically incorrect, but still a good warning. It means they are fine for industry, but not for people.

It is also enormously helpful if air purifiers you choose have enough activated carbon or other media to absorb gases and odors. Volatile organic compounds (VOC’s), paint fumes, formaldehyde outgassing, ozone, and other such unpleasantries can be absorbed in addition to the particulates such as pollen.

Purchase enough good quality air purifiers to clean your home and mark your calendar so that you change the filters when they need to be changed. Some air purifiers indicate when a filter needs to be changed and some don’t. It really doesn’t matter. You can easily mark your calendar with the manufacturer’s recommendations, and simply change the filters when it’s time.

It’s also helpful to get the filters in your air conditioning system changed before allergy season starts. If you don’t know where to get the filters, simply get the manufacturer’s name off of the system and call them up. They’ll either carry the filters themselves or let you know where to purchase them. Many systems have electro-static filters which can help keep the dust down. However, they don’t absorb all the pollens and other pollutants so you still need room air purifiers in key areas of your house.

Just because you have allergies, don’t banish yourself from the beautiful outdoors entirely. However, remaining indoors between the hours of 5:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. are a good idea, because that’s when pollen is usually emitted. Stay inside on very windy days too. Wash your hair and clothing when you’ve spent a lot of time outdoors, and wear a mask to mow the lawn. Or better yet, pay some teenager who is desperate for spending money to do it.

In summary, if you start today and don’t procrastinate you can face allergy season without cowering, pick solid allergy air purifiers, be careful as we suggested above and you will minimize your symptoms.

Ted Zajac, Jr.
MSE Johns Hopkins University

Asthma and Air Purifiers

Thu, 20 Jul 2006 10:47:27 -0400

Breathing is something we do on a daily basis and can take for granted. For asthmatics, breathing normally is an action that is appreciated every moment. Asthma is a disease that affects a person’s lungs and air passageways and can make it difficult for him or her to breathe. Asthma affects approximately 20 million people in the United States. It is a disease that has no known cure but there are many ways such as air purifiers to treat asthma and suppress the symptoms of it.

Asthma is a disease that consists of two main components. These components are constriction and inflammation, both of which occur in the lung passageways. Constriction is when the airways narrow because muscles tighten around them and inflammation is when the airways get irritated and start to swell. When both of these actions occur together, they cause the symptoms of asthma such as difficulty breathing and swelling of the lungs. A person experiencing an asthmatic attack has difficulty catching his or her breath and is usually coughing or wheezing in order to try to breathe.

Asthmatic attacks can occur at any time. Some can be severe and some can simply seem like a shortness of breath. Due to this characteristic of the disease, some people are still unaware that they have asthma and need to treat it. If asthma goes untreated, a person may experience a decrease in lung function. The disease makes a person’s lungs work harder and without help or treatment from an outside source, a person suffering from asthma will have weaker lungs. Air Purifiers can help.
There are many contaminants in the air that can be asthma triggers. Some of the contaminants include pet dander, allergens, pollen, dust or chemicals. When these substances are breathed in, asthmatics are sometimes affected and can experience difficulty breathing. An asthmatic affected by seasonal allergies may also find that response to the allergies can lead to an asthmatic attack. The toxins found in indoor air can easily be filtered out of the air indoors with an air purifier.

There are simple things that can be done to prevent asthmatic attacks such as keeping pets outside, not smoking tobacco products in the home or dusting all furniture as much as possible. However, air purifiers are proven to be the most effective way to keep indoor air clean and safe. Most air purifiers are proven to remove 99.7% of all particles found in indoor air. Chemical fumes, tobacco smoke and dust can be absorbed into the filter of an air purifier. With these contaminants no longer present in the air, the probability of an asthma attack is very low for the sufferer.

The High Efficiency Particulate Air Filters, or HEPA filters, that are used in air purifiers are effective in absorbing most toxins in indoor air that can be related to asthma attacks. They are able to remove 99.7% of all particles that are 0.03 microns and larger. These particles can include pollen and dust particles, which are the main cause of asthma attacks among sufferers. If indoor air pollutants are not removed from the air, they can circulate an indoor room with no escape. The pollutants are then breathed in and can cause a severe or minor asthmatic attack. With an air purifier, these particles and pollutants are absorbed and cannot be circulated throughout the air.

In a 1990 review of indoor air pollutants, published by The American Thoracic Society, it was stated that air purifiers containing the HEPA filter are able to remove a significant amount of particles from indoor air, making the air cleaner and safer to breathe. Asthmatics who use an air purifier in their home are less likely to have an asthma attack since the pollutants that trigger the attacks are no longer present in the indoor air they are breathing.

There is no known cure for asthma and people diagnosed with the disease will have to deal with it for the rest of their lives. However, with the help of air purifiers, people are finding their asthma attacks are becoming a scarce occurrence instead of a daily struggle. By eliminating particles in the air that trigger attacks, air purifiers are helping people with asthma to cope with their daily lives. Asthma may be an uncomfortable disease but people are finding relief in the use of air purifiers.

Blueair Air Purifiers

Thu, 20 Jul 2006 10:28:45 -0400

These products are noted for stylish design, high quality construction and low noise levels all things that the maker can be proud of. While many cleaners claim to be quiet, these purifiers utilize two key technology differences to get there. First, the units use a combination of electrostatic and HEPA filters. Charging the flow prior to moving it through the filter allows the filter to retain HEPA levels of efficiency without the tightly constricted flow of a typical HEPA filter. In simple terms: these units breathe easier and is thus able to be quieter. The results are great electrostatic systems that produce high flow with relatively low noise levels. In addition, the optional SmokeStop filter set can turn your unit into great smoke air purifier as well. Blueair units are also made from noise muffling steel to further improve the livability of the system.

IQAir Air Purifiers

Thu, 20 Jul 2006 08:32:59 -0400

The IQAir series of indoor air purifier products are groundbreaking in terms of both their technical design and style. The line consists of the 5-year warranty IQAir HealthPro Compact, HealthPro, HealthPro Plus, and teh 1-year waranty GC VOC, GC AM, GC Chemisorber, and GC Multigas. Technically these air cleaners are superior in terms of minimal leakage past the filter modules. Every IQAir HEPA air purifier cleans the airflow that passes through the IQAir filter to 99.99% or better. As opposed to discount systems where a lot of flow may leak around the filter. The IQAir design prevents this so all of the airflow that is coming back into your room is purified while making these units among the most silent systems on the market. HealthPro products are made in a modular fashion so that you change only the filter element that has been reported by the control panel to have expired. The electronic control system monitors and reports the condition of each filter element. All of these products except the HealthPro Compact come with a remote control.

Allerair Air Purifiers

Thu, 20 Jul 2006 10:37:36 -0400

The Allerair series of indoor air purifiers provide a different approach to the technology. First, the motor and fan in all of the systems is the same. But, by enlarging the size of the filter area (this is done by making the air purifier taller) more filtration media is made available for absorbing pollutants and thus the manufacturer rates the units for larger size rooms. In addition, the company provides a version that has a UV filter stage to sterilize airborne pathogens and antigens. Allerair systems are all-metal with baked enamel finish construction and thus forgo the plastic that is offered by some manufacturers.

Austin Air Purifiers

Thu, 20 Jul 2006 10:38:28 -0400

Austin Air Purifier models HealthMate, HealthMate Junior, and Allergy Machine models are wonderful bread-and-butter products. There is nothing fancy about these US made units except their performance. They have an all-steel construction, a three speed control switch, and the larger units have casters for easy positioning in your home. The manufacturer of these quality products offers a 5-year limited warranty. Probably the most compelling reason to select an HealthMate is the filter life. Each Austin cleaner is backed by a 5-year prorated warranty for normal household use. There are no other office or home air purifiers on the planet that come with such strong support. Plus, there is virtually no maintenance with this air purifier. Just plug this workhorse in and let it run.

Air-O-Swiss Air Purifiers

Thu, 20 Jul 2006 10:40:09 -0400

AOS has established many air purifying products on the market that are efficient and effective. These products are proven to effectively clean indoor air from harmful particles. Customers have found the products to be easy to use and low on energy use. The air purifiers designed by the firm are powerful while still staying quiet. The purifiers are designed for functionality and effectiveness. Air O Swiss offers a wide variety of products from air cleaners to combi units to air purifiers. Each product manufactured by the firm is sure to be top quality and top of the line when it comes to technology. The company prides itself on its innovative designs, attention to detail and ability to satisfy all customers.