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Comment by klipklop | Hacker News Reader

Sadly the state of California bans simple box fans + filters from being sold. For example if you try to buy a "Lasko Air Flex Steel Portable Home Office 3 Speed Air Purifier Machine Box Room Fan with Manual Ergonomic Control Knob and 6 Foot Cord, White" from Amazon you will be greeted with this when you try to order:

"""This product does not meet California air cleaner regulation requirements, and cannot be shipped to California"""

This is essentially like the video, but a slightly beefed up box fan to handle the extra load from the filter. It also takes standard household furnace filters. People have tested these and they totally work.

For a state that often has horrific air quality due to wild fires it's total BS you can't quicky order something like this off Amazon in a pinch.

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Reading [1] about the regulations, it sounds like the only requirement (for self contained air cleaners) is that it has to be certified, and can't produce ozone. That seems pretty painless, and I would like the comfort of knowing that if I buy an air cleaner, it actually does what it says. Same as masks should have testing requirements to show efficacy.

[1] https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/our-work/programs/air-cleaners-ozone-...

Re masks - unless you buy them and wear them because of the rules, and not because you want to achieve some physical/medical effect.

I mean you can put regulations on anything to make it sure it is doing what it is supposed to be, right?

The spirit of the regulation is to make sure it is not emitting ozone like this ozone filter-less purifier: GreenTech GT-50.

It may be "painless" but if it costs $X per unit to certify and they make $x-.01 per unit, the company isn't going to sell that in CA.

The harm caused by the lack of a super cheap and effective air filter, especially in CA where we can get smoked out for weeks due to fires could be greater than the harm reduced by the regulation. Especially when it is obvious that this in now way could emit ozone since it is just a fan and a filter.

> I mean you can put regulations on anything to make it sure it is doing what it is supposed to be, right?

Yes, and when it comes to selling health-related products, the standards are higher than, say, entertainment devices. For very good reason.

> The harm caused by the lack of a super cheap and effective air filter, especially in CA where we can get smoked out for weeks due to fires could be greater than the harm reduced by the regulation.

That's not clear to me. I know lots of people with air filters, and they all chose them based on aesthetic judgements. I doubt any of them would've acted differently if it was $5 cheaper (from certification)

Also, you can still just buy a box fan ($30) and tape a filter ($10) to it and hope for the best in terms of air purification. You just can't pay someone else $70 to sell you that, unless they run a test to prove it works. Doesn't seem like a big deal.

I genuinely don’t see the problem.

I live in CA. I can go to the store and buy a box fan, and I can buy them online and cheaply. I can buy little clips for holding filters on box fans. I can buy MERV 13 filters at any hardware store or online, and the ones in store are sold at competitive prices and are from real brands that aren’t making up the specs. I can buy actual air purifiers from many vendors, including IKEA, which sells genuinely excellent purifiers.

So what if I can’t buy that hilariously overpriced LASKO kit? I dislike nonsensical CA regulations about as much as anyone else, but this example is silly. I can spend less money to buy a LASKO box fan, a nice set of clips to hold a filter on, and a better filter. Although Amazon is really not a fantastic place to buy just one or two filters — Home Depot or ACE is better.

> """This product does not meet California air cleaner regulation requirements, and cannot be shipped to California"""

From your description, it sounds like you are referring to a product that is advertised as an air purifier in spite of not offering any assurance that it actually purified air at all.

California has set a low bar on what can actually be claimed to be an air purifier and sold as such. Your example product failed to meet that bar. Therefore, it cannot be commercialized based on claims that it has not backed up.

Sounds to me like society is working. Snake oil is not excusable in this day and age.

A box fan with a HEPA filter stuck to the back of it has been proven to work reducing PM 2.5. The EPA seems to think they are OK:

https://www.epa.gov/air-research/research-diy-air-cleaners-r...

It's unreasonable for a box fan that can accept a standard filter on the back cant be sold. It's completely safe to use and not a scam at all. Buying this model means you don't have to duct tape the filters on. Also the model is designed to tolerate the extra load from the filter.

> A box fan with a HEPA filter stuck to the back of it has been proven to work reducing PM 2.5. The EPA seems to think they are OK:

You are free to MacGyver whatever you want.

The moment you want to sell something you put together as a product that does something, you need to make sure that you are not defrauding the public. If your device really does what you claim it does, just subject it to tests to assure everyone.

California is saving you from buying an overpriced absurdity with unspecified performance.

Just buy a box fan and a filter. You’ll need to know how to buy filters anyway so you can replace them.

This is literally what the product I am talking about is. It's a box fan that has a filter holder on the back of it. It uses a standard furnace filter size. Keeps you from having to tape the filter on, etc.

This thing?

https://www.amazon.com/Lasko-Portable-Purifier-Machine-Ergon...

With a MERV10 filter? Advertised as removing smoke?

Here is some actual MERV data:

https://www.epa.gov/indoor-air-quality-iaq/what-merv-rating

MERV 10 is not guaranteed to remove sub-micron particles at all. You need at least MERV 11 for that. [0] Having personally tested some filters in wildfire smoke with a little handheld particle counter, I believe in actual specs. If there isn’t an actual spec referencing a defined standard, then it does not matter how many platitudes about smoke are given — the device is unlikely to work.

[0] And you probably want MERV 13-16 to get to the air purifier sweet spot where flow times removal rate is large and where cost is reasonable. But if you’re going to err, err in the direction of HEPA so that particles actually get removed.

most filters remove large and small particles. its the mid size that the good filters get.

Hmm, I recall an EPA chart showing expected performance of different MERV classes versus particle size that had the lower classes staying at zero for very small particles, but I’m not seeing it right now. But I found this — start at page 71.

https://ordspub.epa.gov/ords/eims/eimscomm.getfile?p_downloa...

You do want the higher MERV classes to get decent performance.

this linked article has a bunch of info https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31812259

It looks like there’s an opening for someone to market one of these as a scientific instrument for the outdoor collection of airborne pollutants.

There is also an opening for someone to market this exact product exactly the same, but just undertake the testing to prove it actually works as advertised to comply with California law.

As a state where air quality is a major public health concern, it seems very reasonable for the regulations to protect consumers from being sold scam products that do not actually filter the air. I understand this concept is well tested and proven, but I think we're all familiar with the general counterfeit product issues on Amazon and I would be 0% surprised to get a fake of even such a simple design.

It would be more reasonable for the government to protect its citizens in a state where air quality is a major public health concern.

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