AIR CLEANERS EFFECTIVE AT REMOVING VOCs?

Home air cleaners are good at getting rid of dust and dander, and some manufacturers claim they remove harmful gasses too. Now researchers are taking a closer look at that claim. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Skye Rohde reports:

Transcript

Home air cleaners are good at getting rid of dust and dander from the air, and some
manufacturers claim they remove harmful gasses too. Now researchers are taking a
closer look at that claim. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Skye Rohde reports:


Researchers at Syracuse University evaluated 15 different types of air-cleaning units in
their two-year-long study. They tested the units’ ability to remove 16 types of volatile
organic compounds, or VOCs. VOCs are chemicals that can cause eye and skin
irritation, and others are considered carcinogens.


The researchers found that none of the air-cleaning units removed all the VOCs they
tested. Jianshun Zhang was the lead researcher on the project. He says VOCs are
everywhere:


“Building materials, household products such as cleaning agents, wax, printers, copiers
and computers… there are many sources of volatile organic compounds.”


Zhang is calling for an established procedure to evaluate air cleaners’ effectiveness. He
says that until air-cleaning units improve, the best way to get rid of VOCs is to open
windows and use fans in your home.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Skye Rohde.