When I was coughing through Beijing’s airpocalypse and thinking about buying an air purifier, I wanted to know something first–do air purifiers really get the small particles of PM2.5? I wondered because I saw lots of air purifier tests on pollen, but pollen is generally 10 microns or larger, whereas I was really […]
Tag: PM 0.5
How Big of a Room Can the Cannon Clean?
After I tested every fan in China I could find with a flat front… …the results of one fan stood out above the rest. Because of its appearance and how much butt it kicked, I called it “the Cannon.” In Anna’s 15m2 Beijing bedroom, it crushed particulates. It removed 97% of the small .5 microns […]
Test: Do you have to run your purifier all day?
Some purifier companies recommend running your purifier all day. But is that really necessary? If so, isn’t that a big waste of your filters and energy? Test Method To get to the bottom of it, I set a Smart Air Cannon on a timer to turn on for two hours everyday in a 13.5m2 Beijing […]
Do Chinese New Year Fireworks Pollute Indoor Air?
I’ve posted data before showing that outdoor air quality is strongly correlated with indoor particle counts (r = .71), but Chinese New Year gives nerds like me a great chance to see what happens when we get a momentary shock to air quality. The media made a big deal about people cutting back on fireworks this year […]
The Really Small Stuff
To test how effective the DIY filter is, I’ve been posting lots of data on 2.5 micron particles. But my particle counter also measures smaller 0.5 micron particles, and I’ve been looking closely at that lately. Remember that the “PM 2.5” you hear in the news is different from the numbers on most particle […]
How Safe is Indoor Air?
I recently did some research on whether indoor air is as bad as outdoor air. Before that, I had a conversation with a friend in Beijing that went something like this: Friend: I’m not sure if I can make badminton tomorrow. I have a basketball game in the day. Me: Oh man, do you play outside? […]