By Bernard Wolfson
The fierce wildfires that broke out across much of the western United States this summer, spreading smoke across hundreds of miles, continue to pose a serious health hazard to millions. That’s a major health concern because microscopic particles in wildfire smoke, carried by the wind, can penetrate deep into your lungs and travel into your bloodstream.
One study linked wildfire smoke exposure to a twofold increase in the rate of asthma and a 40% rise in strokes and heart attacks. Other research tied smoke to hospital admissions, ER visits and premature deaths. The standard advice is to stay inside when heavy smoke is in the air.
But the smoke can get into your house or apartment. “I think we have fires enough now that people should think of this as something they want to buy,” says Deborah Bennett, a professor of public health at the University of California-Davis.
“Even if they only turn it on during the fires, there’s going to be plenty of times when they’re going to have it turned on. ”There are many options for cleaning the air in your home, depending on your circumstances and — of course — your budget.
If you have an appropriately sized air cleaner with a true HEPA filter and you put it in a room and close the doors and windows, you have clean air really fast.Sarah Coefield, Air Quality Specialist, Missola
If you have an HVAC system, it likely recirculates air that’s inside the house rather than drawing in air from outside. But if you have an air conditioner with a “fresh air” system that brings in outside air, you should turn off the fresh air setting on heavy smoke days.
And be sure to close all doors and windows; otherwise, your efforts will be in vain. You can convert your HVAC unit or furnace into a better air-cleaning system by installing a higher-efficiency filter capable of catching a large proportion — though it won’t get 100% — of the tiny smoke particles.
To cope with wildfire smoke, many public health and air quality experts recommend what’s known as a MERV 13 filter. MERV, or “minimum efficiency reporting value,” is a scale from 1 to 20 that rates a filter’s ability to capture particles. Before you install a new filter, check first with an HVAC professional to make sure your system can accommodate it.
The more efficient the filter, the more it reduces airflow, diminishing the cooling capacity of an air conditioner and requiring more energy to run the heater.
If you don’t have central air, or you have it and want to augment your system’s ability to clear the air, consider buying a portable air cleaner with a high-efficiency particulate air, or HEPA, filter, which can remove almost all particles of the tiny size found in smoke.
“If you have an appropriately sized air cleaner with a true HEPA filter and you put it in a room and close the doors and windows, you have clean air really fast,” says Sarah Coefield, an air quality specialist with the Missoula City-County. If you have kids, or share the home with other people, you should ideally have one air cleaner for each bedroom.
All air cleaning devices sold in California must be certified by the California Air Resources Board, which posts a list of air cleaners it has certified. You might also want to look at Consumer Reports’ list of best and worst air cleaners and at a review of those selected by The New York Times’ product review website, Wirecutter.
Public health experts warn that you should avoid devices that are sold as air cleaners but actually emit ozone, the main component of smog. Gina Spadafori, a resident of West Sacramento, has both a central HVAC system with an extra-thick filter and a portable HEPA air cleaner she keeps in her bedroom. Spadafori, 63, has serious asthma and has long been concerned about air quality.
There is a lower-cost option: Make your own air purifier by attaching a high-efficiency filter to an electric box fan. The website montanawildfiresmoke.org publishes a how-to guide for building such a contraption. The Environmental Protection Agency has an FAQ on box fan air cleaners with instructions for building them. For those who can’t even afford to make an air cleaner from a house fan, nonprofits and local government agencies have provided help.
Climate Smart Missoula, a Montana nonprofit, has distributed around 500 air cleaners to low-income and homebound people in recent years, said Amy Cilimburg, its executive director. In California, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District is providing 3,000 air filtration devices to low-income people with respiratory conditions in nine counties. The American Lung Association has also donated air cleaners to people in need.
But these efforts are tiny compared with the gaping need, said Cilimburg, who thinks the federal and state governments, hospitals and insurers should step in. She envisions a day when medical staffers at a clinic will tell a patient, “‘Oh, look, given x, y or z, you should just take one of these HEPA filters home with you.
There is a lower-cost option: Make your own air purifier by attaching a high-efficiency filter to an electric box fan. The website montanawildfiresmoke.org publishes a how-to guide for building such a contraption. The Environmental Protection Agency has an FAQ on box fan air cleaners with instructions for building them.
The American Lung Association has also donated air cleaners to people in need. But these efforts are tiny compared with the gaping need, said Cilimburg, who thinks the federal and state governments, hospitals and insurers should step in. She envisions a day when medical staffers at a clinic will tell a patient, “‘Oh, look, given x, y or z, you should just take one of these HEPA filters home with you.
This article was produced by KFF Health News, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation
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