The Air Purifier Special: Keeping Your Home Safe During the Holidays

Just the usual preparations require a lot of planning; add all the necessary safety precautions to the mix, and you’ve got quite a lot to think about!

However, if you are planning to have a family gathering soon, you can ease at least some of your worries by having an air purifier around. Having one or more of them running can be a good way to decrease the chances of people getting sick. While it won’t provide 100% protection by itself, with additional measures like physical distancing and washing hands, it can assist in making any gathering much safer.

In this article, we’ll explain how air purifiers can help remove allergens and disease-causing bacteria and viruses, and in doing so, create a safer, healthier environment for you, your family, and your guests.

Air Purifiers VS Allergens

In terms of “self-reported asthma”, the Philippines ranks 32nd in the world, being present in about 12% of the population. Additionally, allergic rhinitis affects 20% of the population. Those numbers may not be surprising considering the amount of smoke, debris, and other pollutants we come across on a regular basis. And that’s just what we face outdoors in the business centers and industrial cities.

We may come across allergens in the less industrial cities and provinces, or even in our homes. Some of the top allergy triggers in the country include:

How air purifiers relieve or prevent allergic reactions

Most air purifiers make use of high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters that capture most, if not all, of the usual allergens, especially the ones mentioned above. These filters are made of multi-layered meshes of fine fiberglass threads, which are thinner than strands of hair. When polluted or allergen-containing air passes through the air purifiers, they get caught in these meshes. Afterwards, the air purifiers release the newly-cleaned air back into the room.

If the filters are cleaned and/or replaced regularly (as indicated by your air purifier’s instruction manual), your air purifier will be able to keep capturing allergens. It will also be able to do so more efficiently than if you didn’t change the filters regularly or when they become overly soiled. When your air purifier is allowed to work at its optimum efficiency, it’s very likely that any allergic reactions you may have to such airborne allergens could become a distant memory.

Air Purifiers VS Bacteria & Viruses Indoors

Disease-causing airborne viruses and bacteria are most commonly spread through the air via tiny respiratory droplets which are emitted when an infected person coughs, sneezes, laughs, or exhales in any way. In the right conditions, these droplets can remain in the air for minutes or even a good number of hours, where they might be inhaled by an unsuspecting victim. A good example is that of a sick person coughing in an enclosed and possibly poorly-ventilated area like a public restroom. That restroom would likely have the perfect conditions to allow infectious airborne viruses or bacteria to linger.

Airborne transmission can also occur over surprisingly long distances which, combined with the ability to remain in the air like invisible mines, makes viruses all the more effective at finding a host. This is why it’s generally recommended to stay at least 6 feet away from people in order to reduce the chances of inadvertently spreading or catching any airborne disease.

How air purifiers reduce the spread of airborne diseases

Air purifiers can help reduce the spread of airborne diseases thanks to their filters. Depending on the air purifier you get, it will use a single filter type or combination of filter types to clean your air. (Also Read: What Kind of Air Purifiers Are There and How Do They Work)

Here, we’ll look at the filters that are especially effective at trapping or destroying airborne viruses and bacteria:

High-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filter air purifiers

In addition to being able to trap many kinds of allergens as mentioned previously, HEPA filters are also fine enough to trap particles as small as 0.3 microns in size. For comparison, most viruses vary in diameter and can reach up to 0.4 microns.

While few research studies have shown that HEPA filters can completely remove viruses in the air, and that some viruses are too small for even the filters to catch, using HEPA filter air purifiers can still help considerably. As an example, when a person infected with a contagious virus coughs or sneezes, he spreads the disease in the form of droplets containing the virus. These droplets are large enough to get snagged in the HEPA filters, which means the viruses get captured as well.

UV-light air purifiers

Air purifiers harnessing UV-light suck in air from a room, pass it through a filter, then bombard it with UV-light. This UV-light is extremely harmful, capable of destroying the nucleic acid and disrupting the DNA of cells, severely damaging or killing them. This makes it dangerous when humans are exposed to it (so it’s good that the light is contained in the air purifier!), and downright deadly to organisms as small as viruses and bacteria. After essentially disinfecting the air by killing off these disease-causing agents, the cleansed air is returned to the room.

To get the best results, be sure to check the room size specifications of the air purifier you plan to buy, as these air purifiers may not be able to effectively clean the air of rooms that are too big for them to handle.