Can the Air Purifier Reduce Dust in My Home?

No matter what kind of house you live in or where you are, dust deposits on all surfaces of your house. Although you are a very loving person in the clean room, your room will never be completely dusty. There are many ways to reduce the dust in your room. An effective way is to use an air purifier to reduce the dust in your home.

What is the Dust composed of?

In order to understand how air purifiers can help reduce dust at home, we must first understand what is actually dust. Although it often looks like uniform gray dirt when it falls on the surface, the dust is actually a mixture of many different kinds of tiny particles, in an alarming amount.

It is a common myth that household dust is mostly comprised of our own skin cells that have shed. In fact, the exact composition of indoor dust will vary between each and every household, and is based upon a number of factors, including how many people and pets live in the home, the outdoor environment, and even how foods are typically cooked and consumed. For most of us, however, dust is mostly made of particles that originate outside.

Outside particles may include pollens, mold spores, and other organic debris. These are harmless to most people, except for those who have health conditions that can be triggered by contact or inhalation of environmental contaminants, such as allergies and asthma. A smaller amount of particles from outdoors may come from scarier sources, such as lead, arsenic, and trace amounts of pesticides. Cigarette smoke, whether it originates from outside or inside the home, can contribute to dust as well.

Indoor dust particles are also generated by a number of sources. While it does not comprise as high a percentage of dust as myth would lead you to believe, our skin cells and hair, as well as our pets’ dander and fur, are components of household dust. Messy cooks can contribute to dust as food particles spatter in the kitchen. Insect by-products also contribute to household dust, both from the dust mites that favor our mattresses as well as from cockroaches and flies that love our trash and leftover food.

In addition to the various sources of dust, these different particle sizes are large. For example, dust mites are very small for us, but in fact dust is very large, 100-300 microns per dust. Pollen ranges from a relatively large 1000 micron to a smaller 10 micron size. The other particles that make up the dust can be even smaller. Flour and pigments in paint can be reduced to 0.1 micron inside, and toxic chemical residues such as cigarette smoke can be in the range of 4 to 0.01 microns.

How an Air Purifier Can Help Reduce Dust

All of these tiny particles move around indoors by floating through the air until they finally settle on a convenient surface in our home. By adding an air purifier to a room, many of these particles will be trapped before they have time to settle, not only making the air more pleasant to breathe but reducing the accumulation of dust on our tabletops, books, and shelves.

The most important tool for filtering out dust is a true HEPA filter. HEPA filters were designed in the 1940s to protect scientists working on the Manhattan Project from tiny radioactive particles, and due to their efficiency at removing particles from the air they gradually became used commercially in filters and vacuums. A true HEPA filter is rated to capture particles at 0.3 microns in size with 99.97% efficiency, although it can capture both much larger and smaller particles as well. The 0.3 micron size was chosen because it is both the hardest size to trap and the size most easily drawn into lungs.

The air purifier allows the air in the room to circulate, and when it inhales the air, it can also inhale all the tiny particles, including dust, that float in it. The air passes through the filter easily, but the particles are trapped in the fiber. These particles will become dust and fall on all surfaces of your home. Inhaled can cause allergies or asthma symptoms. Although air purifiers do not completely remove particles, frequent use can reduce household dust in the room.