Smoke Air Purifiers

Smoke air purifiers are designed to clean the air in rooms and areas where smoking is allowed. It has been increasingly recognized that smoke is an important health risk, both for the smokers themselves, but also for others, as secondhand smoke (the smoke from someone else's cigarette, cigar or pipe).

According to American Lung Association, secondhand smoke contains some 4,000 chemicals, including nicotine, formaldehyde, carbon monoxide, and other known cancer-causing agents.

Avoiding that kind of smoke is the first line of defense. Rules to achieve this include not smoking in home, asking other people not to smoke in your home, asking smokers to smoke outside, and if smoking has to happen indoors, using fans and ventilation to send the smoke outside of the house.

Choosing Smoke Air Purifiers

If there is, however, a need for a smoke air purifier, there are fortunately both studies and reviews of the available purifiers to help you choose a suitable one.

For one, The Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers (AHAM) tests air cleaners with three different types of particles: cigarette smoke, Arizona road dust, and paper mulberry pollen.

The association has developed an American National Standards Institute (ANSI) approved standard for portable air cleaners for filtering efficiency that goes by the name: clean air delivery rate (CADR).

The American Lung Association has reviewed available studies on air purifier effectiveness in controlling air quality.

In their opinion, units containing either electrostatic precipitators, negative ion generators, or pleated filters, and hybrid units containing combinations of these mechanisms, are more effective than flat filter units in removing cigarette smoke particles.

However, they report that effectiveness within these classes varies widely.