Does anyone know how much the negative health effects of living near a highway can be mitigated by using a plug-in HEPA filter?
I'm considering moving to an apartment 200 feet from the 101 (8 lane total highway).
I'm considering moving to an apartment 200 feet from the 101 (8 lane total highway).
A standardized HEPA filter removes 99.97% of particles down to PM0.3. How much it cleans the air in the room in the end depends on many factors, but in a small room and a decent filter you can expect a significant reduction in pollution.
So yes, if you want less pollution, a HEPA filter will deliver it in a theoretical range of zero to 99.97% purification, depending on the variable factors of room size, air circulation, purifier air flow and so forth.
A properly sized purifier will circulate all air in a room several times per hour, so in practice you can expect a good cleanup of particulates (perhaps around 80%) in a fairly short period of time (less than an hour).
Source: I work at a top international air purification company.
I was planning on buying a filter labelled True HEPA from a well known company, that uses a fan and not ionization, and being sure to replace the filter as directed.
The HEPA standard, ensures PM0.3 are filtered out. But this article (http://now.tufts.edu/articles/big-road-blues-pollution-highw...) says ultrafine particles (PM0.1) are the biggest health risk. Do you know if any filters remove ultrafine particles?
Wikipedia seems to suggest that most do: "Diffusion predominates below the 0.1 μm diameter particle size. Impaction and interception predominate above 0.4 μm. In between, near the most penetrating particle size (MPPS) 0.3 μm, both diffusion and interception are comparatively inefficient. Because this is the weakest point in the filter's performance, the HEPA specifications use the retention of these particles to classify the filter" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HEPA
Things to look out for: - No ionizer. - No uv light. - True HEPA is fine but if they've trademarked or registered their HEPA brand (HyperHEPA, HEPASilent), I would ask them more about what that means and they should provide a pretty good answer within the context.