High-quality air purifiers are an excellent way to rid your indoor air of pollutants. Air purifiers can help reduce allergy symptoms, prevent mold from growing in your home, and even lower your risk of contracting COVID. But, as helpful as air purifiers can be, they do have their limitations. Here are some things that air purifiers aren’t capable of doing.
Cure Allergies
Air purifiers with HEPA filters are able to remove at least 99.97% of dust, pollen, mold, bacteria, and any airborne particles with a size of 0.3 microns. This means that a person with allergies will experience minimal to no symptoms in rooms with high quality air purifiers. However, this relief from allergies is not a cure. Unfortunately, air purifiers can only eliminate the pollutants causing symptoms, not cure the allergy. Allergy symptoms will persist in indoor spaces that are not being cleaned with an air purifier.
Adjust Humidity
While air purifiers are excellent at keeping air free of pollutants, they are not equipped to add or decrease humidity.
In an indoor environment, humidity is reduced by cooling the air within a room and allowing the water vapor to condense… which is exactly what air conditioners do.
Air purifiers, on the other hand, suck air in, filter it, and then send it back into the room free of pollutants. Because there is no significant condensation of water vapour in this entire process, the humidity in the room doesn’t change.
Humidifiers and dehumidifiers are the most effective way to maintain a comfortable level of humidity in your home.
Remove Mold
While many purifiers claim to eliminate mold, the truth is that none of them are able to kill mold once it has begun to take hold.
This is because, in order to grow, mold sends out tiny little seed-like particles called spores into the air. The spores float around until they find a surface that has both food and moisture. High-quality air purifiers eliminate the spores in the air, preventing them from ever landing on surfaces in the first place.
Once mold starts to grow in carpet, insulation, ceiling tiles, drywall, or wallboard, the only way to deal with the problem is by removal and replacement. To remove mold, scrub cleanable surfaces (such as wood, tile, stone) with soapy water and a bristle brush and make sure to dry surfaces quickly and thoroughly after cleaning.
Keep Surfaces Clean
High-quality air purifiers can eliminate up to 99.95% of particles down to .1 microns. This means that you can be assured that your indoor air is as clean as possible. However, purifiers aren’t capable of keeping surfaces clean. This is especially important to note during a pandemic. Even though the risk of contracting COVID through contact with an infected surface is low, the CDC still cites infected surfaces as one way that the virus can be spread.
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