Natural Air Purifiers
If you live in urban areas, near a busy street, or experience seasons you don’t want to feel in your living room, just by opening your doors and windows to let out bad smells and let in fresh scents may not always be an option. The solution to living in a home free of smells of steamed cauliflower, shoes, and rubber cement, is to get an air purifier.
Why Airing Your Home Out is not really Enough
It has been shown that airing out your house will stir up the odors in your home a bit and take some of the minor ones with it, especially on a breezy day. But airing out the house won’t get rid of odor that are caused by cigarettes, bacteria, molds, or dirt.
What’s more, the breeze may actually enflame allergies even more.
In addition, opening windows does not purify the air or kill harmful the bacteria and viruses. That is where an air purifier comes in.
Using a Low-Tech Air Purifier
What are low-tech air purifiers? Some of you may already been using them! But, if you are not, you need to get started. Low-tech air purifiers have been shown to do a great job in purifying the air in both offices and homes.
Simple low tech air purifying way is just to change the air filters in your air conditioning and heating system once a month. This will help cut the allergens, dander, and dust in your home in half. As an added bonus, this type of air purifying system is silent and it costs very little, about $20 every three months. While this is better than kicking up pollutants with an outside breeze, your HVAC system isn’t really an air purifier – especially if you live with odors. So, you should consider getting a more advanced type of air purifier in order to really improve the air you breathe.
The Ionizing Air Purifier
Ionizing air purifiers are good systems for smoke filled rooms or for those with odor problems, which are the two main reasons most people run to the window to push it open.
Ionizing air purifier systems like the Ionic Breeze air purifier perform in an interesting way. They send out negatively charged particles, which combine with the positively charged particles in the air. These positively charged particles include smoke and odor. When the particles combine, they become too heavy to remain in the air.
As a result, they are all drawn to the collection plate within the air purifier. At the end of the day, all you need to do is wipe them away from the plate with a clean cloth. It really is that simple! This particular system costs about $300. Consumer Reports, however, has found that these air purifiers do not really work against removing dust particles and allergens, so it may not be the best choice for you if that is what you are looking for.
Low Ozone Air Purifiers
Low-ozone air purifiers work by oxidizing pollutants and leave behind breathable oxygen and purified air. Thus allowing much relief to your respiratory system.
One word of caution, however, low ozone air purifiers do emit ozone. While the levels of ozone emitted by these air purifiers are considered to be safe, it is crucial to monitor the levels to ensure they are not dangerous.
UV Air Purifiers
The most complex air purifier systems are based on ultra-violet light (UV) technology. UV air purifiers will kill bacteria and viruses they come in contact with, so they’re ideal for bathroom and garbage odors.
In fact, by opening up your door and window, you could actually create an environment that helps these germs grow! Thus, UV air purifiers are obviously a much better choice as they are proven to kill viruses and germs effectively.
Whole house air purifiers are also something to look into.