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Vacuum Cleaners and Indoor Pollution
Indoor air pollution in
America is a serious and often misunderstood problem.
Oddly enough, air quality is related to modern construction
techniques.
Todays homes are far superior to yesterday
homes in terms of insulation and air-tight sealing.
While this is great in terms of energy efficiency and
keeping pollens, smuts and other pollutants outside,
it also ensures that any pollutants already in the home
will remain unless removed. We can either open the doors
and windows to 'air out' the house, or we will need
efficient air filtration equipment.
One of the biggest pollutant offenders
is the vacuum cleaner used to clean our homes. If you
ever get that dusty or musty odor, especially while
vacuuming, it's due to leakage through the vacuum bag
and/or filter.
Look around the living room. Is there
a fine sheen of dust on the lamp shades, furniture,
TV etc? For the most part, this dust was not brought
in from the outside. It's simply being recirculated,
much of it through vacuuming. Incidentally, this dust
can remain airborne for up to 72 hours. Any dust not
breathed into our lungs simply settles onto our upholstery
and finally back into our carpeting and flooring. Not
a pleasant scenario.
Now, in order for air or furnace filters
to work, the dust must be airborne and air must be moved
through the filtration media. In the meantime, that
airborne dust, with all of its nasty ingredients, is
in the air that we breathe.
Most of us have heard of HEPA filtration.
It's an industry standard acronym, High Efficiency Particle
Arrest, developed by government scientists for passive
air filtration. The standard is required to capture
99.97% of all airborne particles down to .3 microns.
HEPA is used in nearly every vacuum bag and most air
filters in the U.S. But here's the inherent problem
with HEPA. HEPA was designed for Passive Airflow. Passive
Airflow simply means gentle or normal environmental
airflow, such as the movement of air in our living room,
for example. There is no powerful fan or other device
forcing air into the filtration system at a high volume.
We don't feel the air currents unless we're sitting
in front of a fan, in other words.
However, when HEPA is used in a vacuum
cleaner, it is subjected to the powerful exhaust air
volume of the vacuum. The resulting airflow quickly
clogs the HEPA bag and filter, as well as degrading
the material. Once the filtration medium is saturated,
or clogged, the machine cannot "breathe".
A thicker air filter can be used in
the vacuum, but air flow is reduced. The machine will
filter more air but catch even less dirt.
Since airflow is now reduced, the cleaning
ability of the vacuum is lessened. More dirt is left
in the carpet flooring and the air that does get through
is polluted, effectively creating a dust storm. Unless
we change our bags and filters very frequently, we are
defeating the purpose of vacuuming.
This problem has been solved by some
vacuum manufacturers. They use seven layers of an advanced
Electrostatic polypropylene microfiber, along with HEPA,
designed to allow full airflow without clogging, and
filter down to .3 microns, about the size of a staph
bacteria!
With this new technology, the dirt never
becomes airborne in the first place, yet virtually every
grain of soil and contamination is removed from the
home by the vacuum, making a much cleaner and healthier
environment, virtually allergen free. For more information
on this subject, visit your local vacuum dealer.
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