How an Air Purifier Reduces Dust in Your Home

No matter the size of your home or where on the globe it’s located, dust is a fact of life. It settles on the furniture and other surfaces of everyone’s home. While keeping the dust at bay may seem at times like an uphill battle, all hope is not lost. There are steps you can take to help reduce the amount of dust in your home, and one of the most effective is to use an air purifier.

What Makes up the Dust in Your Home?

While you may think of dust as just nondescript grey dirt that lands on your furniture, dust is a mishmash of numerous different particulates that come from many diverse sources. The exact makeup of household dust is as individual as the household. The number of residents, presence of pets, and even how meals are prepared and eaten contribute to the type of dust present in the home. However, most of the bothersome dust that accumulates on your household surfaces originates outside of your home.

Pollen, mold spores, dirt, and organic debris all make their way into your home through open doors and windows as well as on clothing and shoes. While these tiny particles are harmless to most people, certain health conditions, such as allergies or asthma, can be triggered by contact or inhalation. More dangerous substances, such as lead, arsenic, pesticides, and cigarette smoke can also hitchhike their way into your dwelling on your clothing and shoes.

Dust is also comprised of shed skin cells, pet hair and dander from sources inside of our homes. Some of our dust even originates from tiny pests. Dust mites that love our mattresses and cockroaches and flies that love our garbage leave byproducts that settle on our furniture and floors.

These things combine to make up our silty household dust. While dust has a wide range of sources, its particles also come in a wide range of sizes. Some components, such as dust mites, while almost imperceptible to the naked eye, are quite large in comparison to others. Dust mites measure between 100 and 300 microns. Other components are much smaller, toxic residue from cigarette smoke can be as small as .01 micron.

How an Air Purifier Can Help with Your Dust Problem.

These miniscule particles float through the air until they eventually come to rest on your household surfaces. An air purifier helps trap these floating particles before they can come to rest in your home. This does more than make the air more enjoyable to breathe, it also keeps your home cleaner by reducing dust accumulation on furniture, floors, shelves, and other surfaces.

An air purifier with a true HEPA filter is the most proactive way to keep dust from becoming a problem in your home. Developed in the 1940s to protect scientists working on The Manhattan Project, HEPA filters are incredibly efficient in removing even the tiniest of particles from the air. A true HEPA filter is capable of securing particles as tiny as .3 microns in size with 99.97 percent efficiency. This is an important measurement because .3 microns is the particle size that is most easily and commonly inhaled into the lungs.

As it circulates the air in a room, an air purifier sucks in air and all the dust that’s freely floating in it. Before the air is expelled, the tiny particles of dust get caught in the filter and left behind. Those particles that get trapped in the air purifier’s filter are what would have eventually settled on the surfaces of your home as dust or potentially have flared up allergies and asthma. While an air purifier cannot completely remove dust and allergens from your home’s air, it can create a significant reduction with regular use.

Austin Air purifiers utilize a special four-stage filtration system to help prevent dust from building up in your home. The four-stage filtration of Austin Air purifiers combine a large particle pre-filter, a medium particle filter, true medical grade HEPA filter, and an activated carbon filter. These four-stages of filtration mean less dust floating around your home, a reduced need to clean surfaces, and higher quality air that is easier to breathe.

For general everyday household concerns, try Austin Air’s HealthMate model line. It comes in both standard HM400, which effectively cleans up to 1500 square feet, and junior HM200, which is perfect for smaller areas up to 700 square feet.