How an Air Purifier Can Help With Smoke in Your Home
You cook a sizzling steak on your gas stove and your home smells for days. Your roommate smokes cigarettes, and the smell constantly lingers. You live in an area prone to wildfires and no matter how careful you are, it makes its way through the cracks of your windows and doors. What can you do about the smoke that clouds your home? Can an air purifier help, and if so, how?
Does your house smell? Learn about five common culprits!
What is Smoke Made Of?
Before we get into air purifiers, we need to understand what exactly is in the various types of smoke.
Cigarette Smoke
The smoke that’s released from cigarettes is made up of carboxylic acids, phenols, humectants, nicotine, water, terpenoids, paraffin waxes, PAHs, catechols, and tobacco-specific nitrosamines (TSNAs).
In total, there are about 600 ingredients in cigarettes. When you burn them, they create more than 7,000 chemicals. At least 69 of these are carcinogens (meaning they can cause cancer). And even those that aren’t carcinogenic are often incredibly toxic.
Cooking Smoke
When you burn something on the stove or in the oven and a plume of smoke begins to take over your kitchen, there’s particulate matter (PM) in the air. PM is so dangerous because it’s very tiny, making it easy for it to work its way into your body to a very unhealthy degree. Particular matter can increase the risk of health problems like asthma and heart disease, not to mention low birth weight.
In addition, the smoke in your kitchen contains many toxic gases, like carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, and toxic volatile hydrocarbons, which include carcinogens.
Wildfire Smoke
When the trees (and all the creatures living in them) catch fire and create smoke, that smoke is a mixture of particulate matter, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, water vapor, hydrocarbon, nitrogen oxides, other chemicals, and trace minerals.
Again, PM is so dangerous because it’s small enough to lodge itself deep in your lungs.
There is no amount of smoke that’s good for you. Both short-term and long-term exposure can wreak havoc on your health.
How Can An Air Purifier Remove the Smoke in Your Home?
You can try to keep the doors and windows to your home closed, avoid burning your food, and ask people to only smoke outside — but what happens if smoke still somehow makes its way indoors (which it probably will)? This is where air purification technology is a must.
The HEPA 13 Filter
More specifically, we need to talk about a medical-grade HEPA 13 filter, which does the vast majority of the work.
This type of filter catches particles invisible to the human eye. In fact, it’ll eliminate 99.97% of particles as small as 0.3 microns and 99.95% of particles as small as 0.1 microns.
But what do those numbers mean? Well, consider that a strand of human hair is roughly 90 microns thick! What about smoke, though? Most particles in tobacco smoke are somewhere between 0.1 and 1 microns, although the numbers can vary. Smoke particles from wildfires are often 0.4 to 0.7 microns. Smoke from cooking varies depending on the specific emissions. Coarse particles are around 2.5 to 10 microns, while ultrafine particles can be smaller than 0.1 microns.
This means that a HEPA 13 filter can target nearly all dangerous particles in the smoke in your home — close to 99.95% of even the tiniest particles.
The Activated Carbon Filter
It doesn’t end there, though. An activated carbon filter also plays an important role in removing smoke from your home, whatever the source may be.
Specifically, an activated carbon filter focuses on pollutants that are in gas form. In addition, it targets nasty smells. This works through the process of adsorption, which basically means that a surface is able to attract molecules of gases. When the gas molecules come into contact with the activated carbon filter, they bond onto the filter, becoming lodged in the pores of the coal.
This means that the gas molecules coming out of the air purification system are fresh, clean, and safe to breathe.
Both a medical-grade HEPA 13 filter and an activated carbon filter are important for clearing the smoke from your home. While each individually is incredibly powerful, when they combine forces, they offer the greatest benefit.
The Latest in Air Purification Technology to Fight the Smoke in Your Home
In addition to a HEPA 13 and an activated carbon filter, Sans adds a pre-filter in the beginning of the air purification process. This is so that the device can start by trapping the largest particles — like hair, dander, and dust — making it easier for the following layers to function optimally.
The Sans air purifier also contains a whole pound of activated carbon, whereas other brands use just a few ounces. This means that Sans is powerful enough to protect you from dangerous chemicals, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and nasty odors.
One of the best parts of Sans is that it’s almost completely hands-off for you. The air purifier runs as needed and monitors the air quality in real time, so you never have to worry about turning it on. It’ll alert you when it’s time to change the filter, and it runs silently — unobtrusive whether you’re sleeping or working.
Air pollution affects more than your lungs. It can hamper your sleep and negatively impact your cognition, and it’s particularly dangerous for children, the elderly, and anyone already dealing with health issues. If you have asthma or bronchitis, it can make your symptoms worse, and those pesky allergies are going to be even more agitated.
We spend the majority of our time indoors — ensure that the air you breathe is crystal clear!