As multiple large wildfires rage across parts of California, residents are frightened. They’re trying to protect their homes and businesses, and evacuate where necessary, and many are trying to figure out the air quality in their communities.

In a series of conflagrations that are estimated to have killed five people, fire is whipping across areas of Southern California, including urban areas of Los Angeles. The largest is the Palisades fire, which has destroyed over 17,000 acres. A fire in Eaton has ravaged another 10,000 acres.

The death toll is expected to rise, and with the fires not yet fully contained as of Jan. 9, they’re expected to continue spreading. 180,000 people have been ordered to evacuate in total.

All of this has released tremendous amounts of wildfire smoke into the Southern California air.

Even people many miles away from the fires are wondering how safe their air is – and what to do about poor air quality.

Looking at the Map

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) maintains an interactive air quality map at Airnow.gov. Looking at this map, you can see that parts of Los Angeles, including Santa Monica and Redondo Beach, are in the red zone – where the air is unhealthy for all residents. Long Beach is in the orange zone, where the air is unhealthy for sensitive groups. Locations like Huntington Beach in the south and Thousand Oaks and Simi Valley are in a yellow zone with moderate air quality.

It’s hard to imagine the fear that sets in as these fires continue to burn out of control. Windy conditions are exacerbating the problem. Although they’re making headway, public officials are taking this challenge very seriously.

As we see things unfolding, we see that Los Angeles is able to battle the wildfires. Days after the fires broke out, Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley said local crews are in “much better posture” to contain the blazes.

Wildfire Smoke and Health Hazards

Why is it dangerous to breathe wildfire smoke, even in trace amounts?

Smoke from wood combustion and other processes contains small particles called PM 2.5 – these invisible microbes can enter the airway, and get embedded in the lungs, causing worsening respiratory conditions.

People who are exposed to PM 2.5 might feel ear, nose and throat irritation, or redness, or watering of the eyes. You might have a scratchy throat or runny nose. Some, especially asthmatics, experience coughing and wheezing. Some experience shortness of breath, fatigue, or lightheadedness.

This kind of exposure is particularly bad for some groups, including:

·        Children and pregnant women

·        The elderly

·        Immunocompromised people

·        Someone with a condition like COPD or similar respiratory condition

Of course, the safety of those in the fire’s path is paramount – fire crews and other responders are working to reduce property loss and the harm that these fires cause actively.

But that wider impact is cause for concern as well.

What do you do when you have billowing smoke in your vicinity, and you feel like you can’t catch your breath? When you smell the telltale odor of smoke and you worry about the quality of the air around you?

In addition to best practices like adequate ventilation, experts suggest that air purifiers can remediate a lot of these contaminants inside of a building or living space. Then you could have a haven from potentially harmful outdoor air that’s filtered and cycled according to the newest technology. A standard HEPA filter on many machines is 99.97% effective for .3 microns, where a superior “Super HEPA” is 99.99% effective for particles down to .1 microns.

Protecting Your Health

First, you can monitor your indoor air quality with an air monitor device. Then you can use state of the art air purifiers to make your air cleaner and more breathable. Take a look at the Airpura V700 as a serviceable model for smoke; there’s also the Austin Air Healthmate Plus, or the Ideal Pro AP80.  The Allerair Pro 5 HD Vocarb is another model that can be great for PM 2.5 in a home space.

By installing these purifiers in your home, you’re getting a reliable way to filter out the small particles that could otherwise impact your health in a negative way.

Let US Air Purifiers LLC help with warranty, pricing information and more. We know the business and how to best protect households and businesses from PM 2.5, as well as other contaminants, from industrial byproducts to natural things like dust mites and pet dander.

Start making your indoor air cleaner today.

November 12, 2024 was World Pneumonia Day, and experts around the world were looking at how to deal with this often life-threatening condition.

In places like Nigeria and developing nations around the globe, pneumonia affects many people, especially young children. There are a number of key factors to consider, but air pollution is one of them.

With that in mind, we took a look at some of the material released by medical providers and related advocates, including the Every Breath Counts Air Pollution and Pneumonia Scorecard that shows the correlation between air contaminants and illness.

Here are some of the statistics showing you what’s happening in places where air quality is especially low.

The Largest Risk Factor

Global studies show that in many countries, air pollution is the biggest factor in pneumonia deaths, and that it contributed to 30% of all recorded pneumonia deaths in 2021.

So this is not a small impact. It means that one of the ways to best prevent fatalities is to deal with the air that people breathe on a regular basis.

Outdoor and Indoor Air Pollution

Here, there are some discrepancies that researchers have noted about how air pollution contributes to respiratory harm in the form of pneumonia. Keep in mind that modern science also shows how air purifiers can practically reduce contaminants. 

Some studies have shown that outdoor air and indoor air contribute to death at about the same rates, overall, per population, given similar impacts. 

“Deaths of Nigerian children under-five due to overall air pollution-related pneumonia were 67,416 in 2019 while deaths of Nigerian children under-five due to household-specific air pollution-related pneumonia were 49,591 during the same year,” reported UNICEF in an article covering this kind of risk.

What African studies and other research finds is that many of those harmed at a young age are experiencing problems due to indoor cooking practices. When you cook around an open fire or some sort of wood combustion or other carbon fuel source, that releases small particles that can be harmful to a person’s respiratory system.

However, researchers also found that for adults, outdoor air pollution can be more deadly.

Global Risk Pockets

The scorecard study found that most air-pollution-related pneumonia deaths are happening in a list of 20 countries, where about half of these are in Africa. The remaining nine countries are in Asia, with one high risk country in Latin America. That’s Brazil.

Tackling the Problem

The study also calls for action targets and government benchmarks as a way to limit outdoor air pollution.

“Unless we take action now to reduce pneumonia deaths and the risk of another respiratory pandemic killing more than 10 million people – which experts say is 66% likely in the next 25 years – millions more adults and children will die from pneumonia,” advocates write. “It won’t be easy…”

Why Does Air Pollution Contribute to Pneumonia?

Pneumonia is an illness that attacks the lungs.

Air pollution weakens the respiratory system and hurts the body’s ability to fight lung infections.

Specifically, too, PM2.5, in the form of small particles released from wood or carbon combustion, gets trapped deep in the lungs, doing particular harm.

Different types of chronic damage involve damage to the cilia, small hair-like items that line the respiratory tract, and inflammation.

Some of the worst contaminants come in the form of the aforementioned small particles called PM 2.5 and toxic gases like soft dioxide and nitrogen dioxide.

This plus exposure to pathogens can lead to a more severe case of pneumonia that can be difficult to fight.

Improving Your Indoor Air

Aside from efforts to clean up the air in your community, there are ways to improve a household’s indoor air to increase the health and longevity of everyone who lives there.

It starts with using an air monitor to identify the contaminants, and see how bad the situation is inside of a building. Then you can use either floor-standing appliances or whole house air purifiers to get rid of various types of contaminants and even pathogens.

For example, air purifiers have been seen to be effective even against mold and PM2.5 particles released from things like wildfire combustion. 

The new science is so overwhelming that a lot of businesses in America are using air purifier machines to make their spaces more welcoming to visitors.

The same can be effective in residential settings. Households can get better breathable air by putting these appliances in place. Some even have new technology like probiotics, filterless elimination of contaminants, etc. There are also standard benchmarks for pathogen and microbe control, where for example, a SuperHEPA filter is 99.99% effective for .1 microns, and a standard HEPA is 99.97% effective for .3 microns.

Let US Air Purifiers LLC help you with warranties and models and everything else. We know how to consult with customers to help them to get just what they need out of an air purifier purchase. Take a look at all of the technology that you can use to breathe easier in your home!

In some ways, it seems like the quality of indoor air is something that’s going to become more of a mainstream preoccupation for American families and small business owners. We’re getting bold new technologies in play, but this is also something that is more on people’s minds than it used to be.

Up until now, many people have thought of this as sort of a ‘niche’ industry, or something that only caters to a small target audience. But as technology increases, we’re going to become more knowledgeable about what’s in our indoor air, and it will make sense to more families to simply have air purifiers in place. Think about wildfire smoke and the small particles that it carries. Many of us had never heard about this until recent years, when advanced cancer research and other investigations are showing how bad air contaminants really are for us.

Air purifiers can be really valuable for an indoor space, whether it’s a home, or a business.

That’s because these simple machines can really eliminate a lot of problems that impact our health. It’s not a question of being “paranoid about germs” or other microbes. Air purifiers get rid of items like mold, pet dander, and various allergens that can cause all kinds of annoying symptoms, and even more serious health impacts.

At the same time, these machines can also be a good way to feel better about your health during the winter cold and flu transmission season.

We spend a lot of time in our homes in the winter, and if we can cut down the transmission of airborne viruses, that’s a major plus for quality of life.

New Research on Virus Prevention

The folks at Phillips, for instance, are working on some fairly detailed research showing how air purifiers may be able to help with virus transmission.

It’s important to point out that people aren’t claiming that air purifiers can remove Covid virus particles from the air. Instead, they’re looking at more general practices like using the machines on flu virus aerosols.

Specifically, this article shows an independent research firm tested certain HEPA filter machines on the flu, and found that it reduced H1N1 influenza levels by 99.9% in a test chamber within 10 minutes.

That’s more of a hard metric on the handling of virus microbes. Again, companies aren’t claiming a certain efficacy against Covid, but it stands to reason that some of this modern technology is going to practically reduce the amount of active Covid in the air.

NASA Looks at Air Purification

For example, take a look at this NASA study, and our coverage of it on our website. There are certain risk factors that can be impacted by using air purifiers. For instance, we know that a lot of smaller virus particles can connect to larger particles that get trapped in HEPA filters. That means that on a practical level, you can expect some trapping of the smaller particles as well, even if the filter is rated for a particular size.

 Another way to talk about this is that effective technology and filters can slow down the movement of small particles, and act against their ability to float to where they can cause trouble.

That’s just one element of how filter technologies can inhibit virus transmission.

Rapid-Fire Air Scans Revolutionize Monitoring

Here’s another very interesting part of the research that’s going on at Phillips…

Industry leaders report that they can build technology that scans the indoor air 1000 times a second. That’s far beyond the speed of a normal moving film (measured in frames per second), which is an amazing capability. You would imagine that you really get a good look at what’s in your indoor air with this level of analysis.

Then you can take the steps to put in place the filtration and other technologies that will remove harmful particles from the air that you breathe every day.

Buying Air Purifiers

That’s some of what’s behind the renewed interest in air purifier technologies. Simply speaking, they provide lots of value for cost – for as little as a few hundred dollars, these machines can actively improve your health and quality of life in so many different ways.

Take a look at mid-range models like the Airpura R400, for example, with the ability to act against a range of small particles. Or browse designs by makers like Austin Air and BetterAir (now called EnviroBiotics), with the different designs that make them effective for certain needs.

US Air Purifiers LLC will help you with warranty, pricing information and everything else - we have what we need to help customers have peace of mind with their purchase, and everything else that comes along with that, like maintenance tips, or explanations of what these systems actually trap. In a lot of ways, this is the “age of the air purifier” – get yours, and breathe easy!

If you’re not familiar with volatile organic compounds or VOCs, one of the first things that you need to know is that these chemicals are very dangerous. The word ‘organic’ is somewhat of a misnomer, in that these are not natural by-products of a healthy environment.

Instead, they’re chemicals that lurk in man-made products, from carpets to pieces of furniture, to other consumer goods like toys or kitchen implements or cabinets.

And they are things to look out for in terms of indoor air quality. These VOCs can cause a range of human health problems that can be more severe and difficult to treat than just allergies. For example, if you’re experiencing eye irritation, scratchy nose and throat, or trouble breathing (or headaches), you might be exposed to some of these items in your indoor air. 

Let’s break down the top five most dangerous VOCs according to some of the expert sources that advocate for human health…and keep in mind that one solution for these contaminants, in the form of adsorption through activated carbon. Many modern air purifiers have this feature, which can remediate these kinds of particles in the air. But it’s important to use an air monitor, because not all of these VOCs have odors to warn you that you’re getting exposed. So even if you don’t smell anything, you can be at risk. 

Top Five Dangerous VOCs

Look out for all of these in your indoor air:

Formaldehyde

When you see the word formaldehyde, you may think about science projects in a lab and the kinds of experiments that people did in high school in the 1980s.

But formaldehyde, which is a preservative, gives off numerous harmful toxins, and it may actually be found in a good number of building products and consumer goods.

For example, formaldehyde was commonly found in alarming levels in the Chinese drywall that was exported to the U.S. in the early 2000s. This type of drywall was commonly used after hurricanes, where there were supply shortages, and after investigations, many homes were remediated.

That’s just one example of how formaldehyde can infiltrate indoor air. 

But formaldehyde is also in lots of other materials! It can also be found in certain kinds of presswood products, paints, and coatings. You can find it in carpets, in rugs, in curtains, or in various kinds of tools and furnishings, even new items with woven materials, like mattresses. The types of things that used to be made with cotton (linens, mats, etc.) may now be fashioned out of vinyl or polymers, which is another place that formaldehyde can lurk. (see more in the CDC’s formaldehyde fact sheet.)

So how does it make you feel? Well, formaldehyde can cause eye, nose and throat irritation. It’s also potentially a carcinogen. Different people experience the symptoms differently. You may feel mild or even stronger itching or burning in your eyes, or break out in hives. You might get headaches, or feel slight trouble breathing. Too often, these problems are hard to diagnose - because you may not be thinking about where these toxins can be! We talk to people who spent weeks or months trying desperately to figure out where the itchiness or stinging or coughing was coming from, only to find, at the end, that these volatile elements had crept in and contaminated their homes. 

Formaldehyde is a big one, but here are some more of the usual suspects…

Benzene

Benzene is a bad one: a known carcinogen that can lead to blood disorders. Short-term exposure can cause symptoms like, but not limited to dizziness, headaches, and nausea. Benzene can come from tobacco smoke, vehicle exhaust, or various kinds of products like adhesives.

Toluene

This VOC is linked to problems like neurological damage, liver and kidney damage, and headaches. It’s found in some types of paints and solvents, as well as adhesives and, commonly, nail polish.

Xylene

Xylene can also irritate the eyes, nose and throat, and the skin, too, with topical irritation. It has been linked to liver and kidney damage with long-term exposure. This is also found in vehicle emissions and paints, varnishes and similar products.

Trichloroethylene

This is mostly found in industrial degreasers, cleaning products and adhesives. This compound is more commonly known as TCE, and there are pretty strong warnings out there regarding exposure to the chemical. TCE can cause pregnancy issues, even birth defects, and is known to be a carcinogen (see more at this EPA resource.)

These VOCs can be highly toxic, even at low concentrations, and ventilation is important with products using substances containing these ingredients.

Dealing with VOCs

Obviously, the best way to prevent harm from these top five VOCs is to make sure they don’t get into the building in the first place.

It’s important to do detailed research when selecting carpeting or flooring products, doing a renovation, or bringing various types of mass manufactured consumer goods into your home.

There’s even the option of off-gassing materials outside of your living space prior to bringing them inside. Many of these items will off-gas most of the toxic material during a certain time frame after they are taken out of their original packaging.

However, you can also use an air monitor to see what’s lurking in your indoor air, and then use air purifier machines to remediate VOCs and other contaminants.

Air purifiers help with the top five VOCs, but they also help with dust mites, pollen, pet dander, mold and more. A good medical grade HEPA filter is 99.97% effective for .3 micron, where a stronger HEPA is rated for being 99.99% effective for .1 micron. The best models vary depending on your desired use: for example, the Airpura V714 is excellent for strong VOC protection, through quality carbon and a Super HEPA for powerful ultrafine filtration, while the Austin Healthmate Plus boasts a powerful combination filter with carbon and a medical grade HEPA. Models like the Allerair Pro 5 Vocarb HD carry a great value for cost. 

Take a look at all of the effective air purifiers available for you, and US Air Purifiers LLC will help with warranty, pricing information, and much more. You can get a surprising amount of air purification for a small amount of money; just a few hundred dollars can help you make a solid investment in terms of your health and the health of your family.

Let US Air Purifiers help with all of your air purification concerns.

You can actually get quite a lot for a reasonable price when it comes to buying your next air purifier appliance.

But don’t take our word for it – you can also ask one of the top experts on everything.

That’s right, it’s ChatGPT, a technology that has skyrocketed in terms of fame throughout this year. Just a couple of years ago, when this came out, hardly anybody was talking about it – but they’re paying attention now. More people are using this AI engine instead of a Google search to figure out what to buy, and what to look for in a particular market.

So we sat down and asked ChatGPT about what you can get for $200 in order to clean your indoor air.

About the Shopper

First, we asked ChatGPT a more general question – why do people buy air purifiers?

This is what the model said:

“People buy air purifiers to improve indoor air quality by reducing airborne allergens, odors, smoke, and pollutants that can trigger health issues like allergies or asthma. By filtering out dust, pet dander, pollen, mold spores, and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), air purifiers create a cleaner, fresher environment that may help people breathe more easily and enhance their overall well-being.”

We thought that ChatGPT did a good job of including most of the main items that people are looking to eliminate from their indoor air.

First, there is the range of allergens that can cause respiratory conditions and other symptoms.

Then there’s odors, like smoke or pet odor, for example. You might have to use an ozone machine for denser animal smells, but an air purifier can be a good first line of attack – or of defense!

Then there’s volatile organic compounds, as well as items like dust mites, pollen, mold spores, and pet dander.

This survey goes a long way in explaining why you would want to have these machines running inside your home or living space.

Best Features for $200

We then asked ChatGPT to tell us what you can get for your money when you’re shopping in the $200 price range.

One of the first answers it gave was that you can get additional filtration beyond just a basic HEPA filter.

ChatGPT pointed out that HEPA can capture 99.97% of particles down to .3 µm, which includes things like mold spores and pet dander.

It also pointed out that you can get a pre-filter in addition to your main filter, and that this can really cleanse the indoor air in a better way.

In addition, ChatGPT suggest that you can get appliances with air quality sensors for monitoring, and smart home integration features.

In summary, it provides this guidance.

“In short, a $200 budget can secure a feature-rich air purifier that’s energy efficient, smart-enabled, whisper-quiet, and equipped to handle a broad range of common indoor air pollutants. Look for models that combine several of these features to ensure maximum value and a healthier home environment.”

That’s pretty good, in our opinion.

Makes and Models

When we asked ChatGPT about the best models for home use, it returned some good names from some of the manufacturers that we work with, including Austin Air and AirPura. (It’s important to note that the most affordable models from these makers start at around $500-$700, so for $200 models, you’ll want something else.)

There’s also the BetterAir systems that offer probiotic components, and other models that incorporate different kinds of new technology beyond simple filtration.

As for good models under $200, you can take a look at the Airfree 1000, or the T800 for small spaces. This BetterAir model has probiotic technology, too. Or as a starter, try this tower unit for just $167.99. Then there’s the Respiray personal wearable model, with HEPA particulate protection and great ergonomic design. 

It’s also important to ask about activated carbon, which is one thing that the model’s response seems to leave out. Activated carbon is responsible for the adsorption of VOCs, and certain kinds of chemical binding which are helpful to the air-cleansing process. 

As you’re shopping, you can turn to US Air Purifiers LLC for advice on warranties, model features, and more. We’re good at helping customers to get what they need in terms of effective air quality monitoring and purification within their homes, to breathe easier and have peace of mind about their purchases.