AirFree Air Purifier: Why to Care About Indoor Air Quality

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This post answers why you should care about indoor air quality and how you can improve it with the Airfree air purifier.

Contents
  1. Yes, You Should Worry About Dust in Your House!
  2. What Air-Quality-Health Studies Found
  3. Care About Indoor Air Quality: Dusting Is Not Enough
  4. How the Airfree Purifier Works
  5. What Does the Airfree Air Purifier?
  6. The Air Purifier Is Low Maintenance
  7. An Airfree Air Purifier Is Your Solution
  8. How Do You Know It Worked?
  9. Clean Air in Your Walk-In Closet
  10. What Are Your Costs for Clean Indoor Air?
  11. Care About Indoor Air Quality in a Nutshell
  12. References

Updated: 1/3/2022
Disclosure: Ad. The purifier is a sample from Airfree. The post is not endorsed by them. I wrote it entirely myself and it represents my own 100% honest opinion.

 

Yes, You Should Worry About Dust in Your House!

You can only see the very large particles. Think of the annoying dust that you wipe away from your furniture week after week. Or the particles dancing in the room illuminated by the light of the Sun rays coming thru the window.

Ever wondered what they are? These particles can be everything from mold, mildew, dust mites, viruses, pet dander, and other allergens, bacteria, pollen, soot, soil, and/or pollutants in aerosol form. They are all forms of particulate matter (PM).

 

What Air-Quality-Health Studies Found

In recent years, various studies examined the relationship between environmental exposure to PM and health. These studies revealed that particulate matter is mainly inhalable in the micron- to sub-micron fractions! Scientists found that long-term exposure to PM increases the risk of respiratory, allergic and even oncological diseases due to its toxic compounds. Particles combine with gases, polyaromatic hydrocarbons, heavy metals, microorganisms, etc. Statistics state that exposure to high PM concentrations at diameters of 2.5 micrometer in diameter or less causes about 30% of respiratory diseases! Pretty scary, right?!

Just to give you an idea, particulate matter of 2.5 micrometer in diameter is 70 times smaller than a human hair!

Since I know you care about your health, I didn’t hesitate to accept writing a post why to care about indoor air quality when Airfree asked me to review their Onix-3000 device. Recall I am an atmospheric scientist and I want the best for my readers. Is this now a disclosure? 😉 Anyhow. Read on!

 

Care About Indoor Air Quality: Dusting Is Not Enough

While the hairs in your nose filter out large particles, small ones can pass. The smaller the PM, the deeper it can penetrate into your lungs!

Pollen, spores, viruses etc. are small enough to enter your home. Just imagine how much airborne pollen will come in when you open the door to get in or out of the house when in spring pollen concentrations are so high that everything is yellow like in the photos below.

 

pollen deposited on a deck in Interior Alaska as 1 reason to care about indoor airquality
Pollen that deposited on burgundy lumber within one night in spring.

 

pollen deposits on asphalt after evaporation of the water in spring
Pollen that had collected in a puddle as seen after the puddle evaporated

 

When you live in a region with wildfires, close to highways, industrial complexes, add these emissions to the mix of health-adverse pollutants in your home. More on poor air quality due to wildfires.

 

An Airfree Air Purifier Is Your Solution

Fortunately, there is now a possibility to clean your indoor air. Airfree is the MOST TESTED purifier on the market. You can find the test results from various state and country agencies on their web site. The Airfree air purifier removes airborne mold, spores (shown in the top panel of the post banner), mildew, dust mites (spider shown in the top panel of the post banner), organic odors (known as VOC), viruses, pet dander and other allergens, bacteria, pollen and even ozone from your indoor air!

 

Pollen under the microscope: spruce (left) Birch (right)
Pollen under the microscope. Left: Spruce. Right: Birch. Photos courtesy to J. Anderson (2004)

 

Just to give you some examples of VOC. Tobacco smoke includes VOC among other gases and particles. Its smell is mainly due to VOC. The great smell of perfumes is also VOC. Of course, the device will not destroy the perfume that is in its bottle 😉 . It just reduces the odor cloud produced in your living room by that woman who always smells like she bathed in perfume. It will also slightly reduce the smell of tobacco smoke.

Did you know that besides corroding metallic equipment, ozone is also health adverse? It is known as an eye-irritant, to destroy lung tissue, and to trigger respiratory diseases!

 

photo of the package of the air purifying unit
The device comes in a box. You can have the cleaning unit in white or black. There are also other forms available.

 

 

How the Airfree Purifier Works

Depending on the model, the Airfree device cleans between 14000 and 20000 liter of air every hour! This means it takes only a very short time to treat all the air in the room. To give you an idea what this means: Let’s assume you have a 650 sqt. ft room (60.387 m2) that is 2.5 yards high (7.5 ft, 2.286 m). Such a room has a volume of 4875 cubic ft (138.04 m3). One cubic meter contains 1000 liters. As a result, your assumed room would hold 138040 liters of air.

Schematic view of how the Airfree device takes care of indoor air quality
Schematic view of how the Airfree device works. From Airfree.com (2018)

 

The device pulls air into its internal chamber (see schematic view above). Inside Airfree’s patented ceramic core, the temperatures is around 400F (250oC. At this temperature, 99.9% of mold, airborne bacteria, common household dust mites, viruses, and pet dander are destroyed. Since the chamber is very small as compared to the room, its high internal heat will not significantly increase room temperature.

 

Airfree Onix-3000 unpacked
Unit unpacked. All you have to do then is to plug it in and making sure that the blue LED lights up. It means that it is on. After less than half a minute you also should feel slightly warm air coming out of the top.

 

What Does the Airfree Air Purifier?

Reducing the mold in air will reduce the food dust mites feed on. The cleaner also destroys the harmful toxins and fungus introduced into the air by dust mite feces and skeletons. The feces and skeletons are what causes asthma and respiratory allergies in many sensitive people.

Of course, the purifier can only remove mold and spores that are airborne. Mold on walls, carpets or any other surfaces have to be removed with the respective traditional methods. However, the equipment prevents the mold and spores from spreading and infecting other areas.

The device works in air conditioned, non-heated and heated rooms. For best efficiency (and to save money) you should buy the purifier with the room size in mind and place the device away from open doors or windows. Why? Doors and windows are always leaks where inside and outside air may exchange. You don’t want to lose the freshly cleaned air!

 

The Air Purifier Is Low Maintenance

No mess as there are no filters to be replaced or cleaned. To clean the outside of the device, unplug it from the outlet and use a dry cloth to wipe off the surface.

What happens when there is an outage? As soon as the energy is back, the device will start working again. The technology works gradually. This means the longer the outage, the longer it takes to reach the clean conditions that existed prior to the onset of the outage.

For your own safety place the device away from any toxic or inflammable products, curtains, water or liquids. Do not open the purifier. Also make sure that kids don’t play with the device. Some devices have lights that go on when the cleaner is not correctly placed. When I hold the Onix-3000 at an angle, the blue top night light (photo below) started flashing. When I put it back on the floor, it stopped flashing.

 

photo of indoor air cleaner taking care about indoor air quality to be clean
Cleaner at work. You can switch off the night light. This one is just blue. There are also units with other colors of night lights or even changing colors. That must be exciting!

 

How Do You Know It Worked?

The purifier makes no noise when it is at work. Nevertheless, sensitive person can feel that it works because they will have reduced symptoms.  For instance, I am allergic against pollen, spores, and dust mites. Because of these allergies, I always had to take medication as the allergens caused eye bags. And they weren’t as pretty as a designer bag! Since we started purifying the air in the living room, my allergic symptoms are substantially reduced. Therefore, adding another one in the bedroom is on our radar. Maybe for Christmas?

 

Clean Air in Your Walk-in Closet

Remember those old times when our grandma’s used lavender pockets, cedar oil, or coffee beans to improve the smell of their closets. They wanted to avoid that their clothes smell moldy or dirty. Now you can buy an air purifier for your walking closet when it has at least 330 ft3 (about 9.35 m3). It protects your clothes form bad odors, and from mold spreading into your clothes. How great is that?

Again, never place the purifier under shelves or in close contact with fabrics!

 

What Are Your Costs for Clean Indoor Air?

The product retails at $299.00. For the highest purification, the device should run 24/7/365. A device draws less power than a 60-Watt light bulb per hour. The instrument shown in this posts consumes only 44 Watt per hour. The device has a built-in soothing adjustable night light that you can switch off to save energy.

Let’s assume you run the device 24 hours a day for a month (e.g. November) and you pay $0.12 per K-Watt hour, which is the mean price for electricity in the US. Furthermore, let’s assume you bought a larger device that uses 60 Watt per hour. Under these assumptions, your costs for clean indoor air produced for that room is 60 Watt per hour times 24 hours times 30 days times $0.12 per K-Watt-hour. Since a K-Watt is 1000 Watt, your cost would be about $5.184 per month, once you invested in the device. In Fairbanks, the K-Watt-hour costs $0.2422, which means Fairbanksans would pay $10.46 per month for clean indoor air for the assumed room.

In Canada, the prices for electricity are between $0.1125 and $0.1356. The mean cost for a K-Watt-hour in the UK, Denmark, Germany, Italy and The Netherlands is  $0.160 (£0.125), $0.33 (2.16 DKK), $0.35 (€0.31), $0.284 (€0.25), and $0.08 (€0.07), respectively. In all cases, the costs are less than drink a latte every work day a month. While the latte isn’t good for your health, clean indoor air is!

 

indoor air sterilizer shown from the top
View from the top of the cleaning unit showing the grid thru which the sterilized air goes back into the room

 

Why to Care About indoor Air Quality in a Nutshell

The Airfree air purifier cleans indoor air efficiently without need of messy maintenance, at a low monthly energy costs.

Improve your health by breezing clean indoor. Browse Airfree’s site now for dealers to get the devices for your home.

 

Improve your health by purifying your indoor air with airfree. #airfree #health Click To Tweet

 

References

Berglund, B., Brunekreef, B., Knöppe, H., Lindvall, T., Maroni, M., MØlhave, L. and Skov, P., 1992. Effects of Indoor Air Pollution on Human Health. Indoor Air, 2, 2-25. doi: 10.1111/j.1600-0668.1992.02-21.x

Edwin, S.G., Mölders, N., 2020. Indoor and Outdoor Particulate Matter Exposure of Rural Interior Alaska Residents. Open Journal of Air Pollution, 9, 37-60. doi: 10.4236/ojap.2020.93004.

Hodas, N., Loh, M., Shin, H.-M., Li, D., Bennett, D., Mckone, T.E., Jolliet, O., Weschler, C.J., Jantunen, M., Lioy, P. and Fantke, P., 2016. Indoor Inhalation Intake Fractions of Fine Particulate Matter: Review of Influencing Factors. Indoor Air, 26, 836-856. doi: 10.1111/ina.12268.

 

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