Vacuums and Air Pollution
Vacuums and Air Pollution
Indoor air pollution in America is a serious and often
misunderstood problem. Oddly enough, air quality is related to
modern construction techniques.
Today's homes are far superior to yesterday homes in terms of
insulation and air-tight sealing. While this is great in terms of
energy efficiency and keeping pollens, smuts and other pollutants
outside, it also ensures that any pollutants already in the home
will remain unless removed. We can either open the doors and
windows to 'air out' the house, or we will need efficient air
filtration equipment.
One of the biggest pollutant offenders is the vacuum cleaner used
to clean our homes. If you ever get that dusty or musty odor,
especially while vacuuming, it's due to leakage through the
vacuum bag and/or filter.
Look around the living room. Is there a fine sheen of dust on the
lamp shades, furniture, TV etc? For the most part, this dust was
not brought in from the outside. It's simply being recirculated,
much of it through vacuuming. Incidentally, this dust can remain
airborne for up to 72 hours. Any dust not breathed into our lungs
simply settles onto our upholstery and finally back into our
carpeting and flooring. Not a pleasant scenario.
Now, in order for air or furnace filters to work, the dust must
be airborne and air must be moved through the filtration media.
In the meantime, that airborne dust, with all of its nasty
ingredients, is in the air that we breathe.
Most of us have heard of HEPA filtration. It's an industry
standard acronym, High Efficiency Particle Arrest, developed by
government scientists for passive air filtration. The standard is
required to capture 99.97% of all airborne particles down to .3
microns. HEPA is used in nearly every vacuum bag and most air
filters in the U.S. But here's the inherent problem with HEPA.
HEPA was designed for Passive Airflow. Passive Airflow simply
means gentle or normal environmental airflow, such as the
movement of air in our living room, for example. There is no
powerful fan or other device forcing air into the filtration
system at a high volume. We don't feel the air currents unless
we're sitting in front of a fan, in other words.
However, when HEPA is used in a vacuum cleaner, it is subjected
to the powerful exhaust air volume of the vacuum. The resulting
airflow quickly clogs the HEPA bag and filter, as well as
degrading the material. Once the filtration medium is saturated,
or clogged, the machine cannot "breathe".
A thicker air filter can be used in the vacuum, but air flow is
reduced. The machine will filter more air but catch even less
dirt.
Since airflow is now reduced, the cleaning ability of the vacuum
is lessened. More dirt is left in the carpet flooring and the air
that does get through is polluted, effectively creating a dust
storm. Unless we change our bags and filters very frequently, we
are defeating the purpose of vacuuming.
This problem has been solved by some vacuum manufacturers. They
use seven layers of an advanced Electrostatic polypropylene
micro fiber, along with HEPA, designed to allow full airflow
without clogging, and filter down to .3 microns, about the size
of a staph bacteria!
With this new technology, the dirt never becomes airborne in the
first place, yet virtually every grain of soil and contamination
is removed from the home by the vacuum, making a much cleaner and
healthier environment, virtually allergen free. For more
information on this subject, visit your local vacuum dealer.
(article supplied by InfoGoRound)
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