Do I need an air purifier?

This is a pretty common question at the moment, especially as we become more aware of how air quality can affect our health.  We wanted to answer it as comprehensively as we could for you here.

Firstly – you need to understand what an air purifier actually does.

An air purifier removes particles, dust, gases, and other pollutants from indoor air, helping to make the air cleaner to breathe.  When you choose an air purifier with a HEPA filter of grade 13 or 14 – you can also be very confident that the filter will capture viral particles of airborne pathogens such as Covid.   This has been proven very successfully in NHS hospitals.

If you have health condition such as asthma or another respiratory illness, an air purifier helps clean the air you breathe to take out any pollutants that may worsen symptoms.  It works the same way for sufferers of hayfever by filtering out the pollen before it causes the sneezes!

You also need to be aware of the air quality in the area you live in.   Google live air quality where you live to see what the air quality is like, and then look at what it’s been like historically. 

If the air quality is bad outside, there’s a high chance that it will be worse inside, especially if you have bad ventilation.  Bad ventilation means no ready access to fresh air (opening a window) or air conditioning/HVAC. 

If the air quality is good where you are, with low PM2.5 levels, then the main point to an air purifier would be to prevent infection risk indoors if you are sharing the space with others.

It may be that you live or work alone, in an area where the air quality is good/excellent and don’t suffer from any respiratory health condition.  If that is the case – then an air purifier probably wouldn’t be top of your shopping list right now.

The other top question we often get asked by commercial clients is – my building has a good HVAC system so why do I need an air purifier as well?   Often the filtration on a HVAC system is not effective at filtering out the contaminants in the air that worsen symptoms of persons with respiratory conditions.   They are not able to capture infectious pathogens like Covid/Flu.  So in this case, where there is a shared space, our recommendation is always to consider in room air purification as it definitely helps prevent people getting contaminated at work.

Once you have decided whether or not an air purifier is a priority – you need to consider the environment you want to put it in and what type or capacity is best for you. 

For example whether you’re buying an air purifier for your kitchen or a large office – the main thing you want to achieve is effectiveness for the space. We recommend that you have an air purifier that’s achieving at least 5 air changes per hour.  

To work that out you need to know the width and length and height of the space you want to purify. This will then give you your total volume of air in that room.  For example if we take a typical office of 6m x 8m x 2.4 ceiling height – your total air volume is 115m3.  You need to times that by 5 to work out what delivery rate you need from an air purifier every hour.  In this example you will need an air purifier that can clean 576m3 of air every hour.  That means all of the air in that office will be purified every 12 minutes.

How do I know what air purifier will be right for this space?  Look for an air purifier with a CADR (Clean Air Delivery Rate) of at least 600m3 per hour.  All air purifiers should display this information, and if they don’t you must ask!

In this example we would recommend our most popular product the Zona 620

Decided that you need an air purifier?

At Zonitise we distribute world class medical grade HEPA air purifiers for every type of space.  From a large corporate office to your kitchen! 

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