Indoor air filtration could lead to increased airborne endotoxin levels (2020)
I have been monitoring my indoor house air for two years now, and attempting to keep my air as healthy as possible. I have found that:<p>1) If you are lucky enough to live in an area with clean air, opening a window is  orders of magnitude quicker and more effective way to clean air.<p>2) Gas stoves are the worst thing you can do to your house air (a fume Hood can partially mitigate this)<p>3) You should be weary of using any cleaning product without ventilation (open windows for a whole day)<p>4) HEPA filters work, but slowly. Realize you can sneeze into these things and some % of your sneeze goes right through&#x2F;around the filter. They need multiple passes to fully clean the air. Big quiet HEPA filters are the way to go.<p>5) Activated Carbon filters grab the stuff HEPA can&#x27;t but they are very slow at it, and I haven&#x27;t found anything commercial that works. The thin black layer on filters doesn&#x27;t work, you need something more commercial like the ones people use when they are home growing weed. IMO, the effect of these is really hard to measure and I wouldn&#x27;t personally suggest this right now.<p>6) Humidity control is important for health and has a relationship to air particulates<p>All of this work and basically I open windows any nice days, when I&#x27;m cleaning, and when I cook. Many HEPA filters and a beefy carbon filter cant compete with this. Even if it means running up the heat&#x2F;AC bill a bit. I&#x27;m considering some sort of heat exchanger with filters in the future, but that is overkill. I am privileged to have nice air outside though and I realize this isn&#x27;t THE solution for everyone.<p>As far as this article goes. HEPA filters are supposed to be replaced every 6 months, but even older filters get rid of so many particulates that we KNOW are bad for you it seems worth this tradeoff. Maybe a HEPA filter with a UV light could help (not by much probably), but be weary of &quot;24 stage filters&quot; and all that nonsense. HEPA is all most houses really need.