Tuesday, August 6, 2019

The New West: Smoke In The Sky, A Purifier At Home | California Healthline

If you live in the West an air purifier should be on your 'must-have' list.  During a wildfire, you may see smoke, but even if you don't see it, you are still at risk.  Amid forecasts for increasingly unhealthy air due to wildfire smoke, residents in Western states are snatching up home air purifiers. With good reason.


Downtown San Francisco was obscured by smoke from the Camp Fire burning about 90 miles north of Sacramento on Nov. 16, 2018

An announcement in California HealthLine 

By Mark Kreidler
August 6, 2019


When the Camp Fire began to rage in Paradise, Calif., last November, the owners of the family-run Collier Hardware store in nearby Chico faced a situation unlike any they’d seen.

A business that might welcome 200 customers on an average day, Collier was suddenly dealing with five times that number — “and they all wanted the same thing,” co-owner Steve Lucena said.

Alarmed by dense smoke, shoppers were snapping up portable air purifiers and breathing masks in staggering numbers. Collier Hardware sold nearly 60,000 adult-sized masks in a couple of weeks, and gave away thousands more that were specially designed for children.

“With the purifiers, we had multiple people unloading them from the truck, and they were sold before we could get them all the way into the store,” Lucena said. “People didn’t care what model it was or how much it cost. We’d normally sell four to six in a year, and we sold 100 in a day.”

Sales of portable air purifiers in California alone are expected to rise dramatically over the next few years, from roughly 469,000 units in 2017 to a predicted 720,000 in 2023, according to a study by TechSci Research presented at a recent meeting of the California Air Resources Board.

Across the country, annual sales of home air filters are expected to cross $1 billion by 2023, according to a report by Research and Markets.

“Interest in effective air purification has significantly risen in recent years due to wildfires,” said Jaya Rao, chief operating officer and co-founder of Molekule, a maker of a $799 purifier. Sales of the unit have doubled each year since it debuted in 2017, Rao said.

Researchers from Harvard and Yale in 2016 produced a list of more than 300 counties throughout the West that will be at the greatest risk of dangerous pollution in the coming decades due to “smoke waves” emanating from increasingly intense wildfires. Among the most vulnerable are heavily populated areas such as San Francisco, Alameda and Contra Costa counties in Northern California, and King County in Washington.

Wildfire smoke is dangerous because of its concentration of noxious fine particles, which measure 2.5 micrometers or less (a human hair, by comparison, measures 70 micrometers) and which, unlike common dust, can be inhaled into the deepest recesses of the lung.

In addition to eye and respiratory tract irritation, this particulate matter — PM2.5 in scientific shorthand — can exacerbate heart and lung issues, including asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and may lead to premature death. Children, older people and those with respiratory illnesses are, particularly at risk.

While much is still unknown about the long-term effects of exposure to wildfire smoke, the microscopic particles are regulated as an air pollutant. A study published last year in the journal GeoHealth found that the number of deaths linked to the inhalation of wildfire smoke in the U.S. could double by the end of the century, to nearly 40,000 per year.

Air purifiers essentially function as scrubbers, removing bacteria, viruses, and PM2.5 as the air passes through them. The air resources board recommends its use to limit the effects of wildfire smoke in the home. It maintains a list of devices approved for use in California.

AIR PURIFIER RATINGS, PERFORMANCE, AND VALUE

Portable air-cleaning units were once considered specialty purchases, but sales-driven competition has flooded the market, forcing prices down. Where a high-end portable purifier might cost $800 or more, several models now cost less than $100. Shoppers can find models with well-known consumer appliance names like Dyson, Hunter, Honeywell, and Whirlpool as well as scores of more obscure manufacturers. Several websites have attempted to evaluate air purifiers, including the size of the room they can effectively clean.

















The New West: Smoke In The Sky, A Purifier At Home | California Healthline:

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