Certain types of air purifiers and air purifier components can be detrimental to your health. These are some of the most common health hazards found in air purifiers today. AllerAir air purifiers do not use any of these technologies or components.

Ozone

Ozone is a severe respiratory irritant! Some air purifiers use ozone to remove chemicals from the air or for mold remediation. Ozone (O3 ) is a highly reactive oxidizing agent. It reacts with chemicals in the air, attaching one oxygen atom to other chemicals, forming O2 (normal oxygen that we breathe) and a by-product. Manufacturers of these products claim that this changes the chemical structure of the molecule and will neutralize it. This is only partly true. First, ozone will irritate the lungs, nose, throat, and eyes (from the MSDS sheet on Ozone). Though it has not been fully studied, there are indications that there may be negative effects of chronic exposure. Second, the "by-products" that some manufacturers consider "neutralized" can be toxic themselves. A recent study, which can be found here , showed that one of these by-products is the carcinogen formaldehyde.

Potassium Permanganate

Certain types of activated carbon are coated with potassium permanganate to better adsorb VOCs. While this is an effective method of VOC removal, potassium permanganate (KMnO4) releases manganese (Mn) particles into the air. Chronic exposure to manganese at low concentrations in the air can cause a form of Parkinson's disease called Manganism and other neurological damage. Exposure limits are regulated at 5mg/m3.

Styrofoam & Plastic

Plastics today are made from hundreds of different chemicals. There is one thing that they have in common: they all off-gas. Plastics release toxic chemicals into the indoor environment. These plastics are virtually all made from petro-chemicals, and are compounds of certain carcinogenic VOCs. Styrene, the chemical in Styrofoam, is structurally similar to benzene. When air is blown by them, such as in a plastic air purifier, these chemicals are released at a quicker rate into the indoor environment.

Many of the air purifiers today that aren't bad for your health are just poorly engineered. While this is not going to make you sick, it isn't going to make you any healthier either. People who spend money on products with these design flaws simply do so due to lack of quality information; generally, a well designed unit can be purchased for almost the same price.

Attached filters

A deliberate design "flaw" used in many air purifiers are combined HEPA and carbon filters. This forces the owner to change both filters at the same time. However, the approximate filter life of a HEPA filter is 5 years, while a carbon filter should be replaced every 2 years. Attached filters force the owner of the air purifier to change the HEPA filter two and a half times more often than is necessary. This is not only a waste of a perfectly good filter, but also will add a significant amount to the overall maintenance cost of the machine.

Tiny amount of carbon or no carbon at all.

Many air purifiers, especially off-the-shelf brands, claim to use activated carbon for gas and odor removal, but will not mention how much of the material is in their filter. This is because they have simply coated a mat with a few ounces of activated carbon (which would cost them very little) so that they can legally claim that their purifier filters odors and chemicals. And this claim is true-for a very short period of time. In an average home environment, that small amount of carbon could get saturated in days, maybe even hours. After this, the filter would need to be replaced or it would be doing nothing. Replacing a filter daily would be both costly and time consuming. If an air purifier does not make any obvious claims to the amount of activated carbon it uses, you ought to be suspicious of the filter's effectiveness. Any air purifier without any activated carbon at all is really only half of a purifier.

Poorly installed HEPA

Most air purifiers use HEPA filters, but many do not use it well. If air can seep around the filter instead of through it, the filtration process is not very effective. If the HEPA is not warmed before it is rolled and installed, it can crack, again drastically reducing its effectiveness. Finally, our HEPA filters are folded into even pleats to increase the filtration efficiency. Many filters are pleated, but if they are not evenly spaced, the effectiveness decreases once again. Our filters use spacers to ensure even spacing.