Researchers are increasingly concerned about the public health impacts of wildfire smoke.Get more news about home air filter,you can vist our website!

A Montana engineer researched the efficacy and safety of an inexpensive and increasingly popular "do-it-yourself" home air-filtration system.

[This story was originally published in August of 2020]

Montana lucked out this summer. Despite persistent early-season warnings of an above-average fire potential, June, July and most of August brought us low fire activity and clear air. But luck ran out last week after California’s wildfire smoke started drifting into Montana’s airshed.

"What has kept a lot of us up at night this year has been that potential at the intersection of COVID and wildfire smoke," says Amy Cilimburg, executive director of the Missoula-based Climate Smart Missoula.According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, wildfire smoke can irritate your lungs, cause inflammation, affect your immune system, and make you more prone to lung infections, including the virus that causes COVID-19.

Since the catastrophic wildfires of 2017, Climate Smart Missoula has teamed up with the local health departments to loan or donate hundreds of portable High Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) air purifiers to schools, daycares and vulnerable residents who otherwise can’t afford them. The machines improve indoor air quality and are especially appreciated when the wildfire smoke intensifies. They can set you back anywhere from $100 to $1,000, but there is a cheaper alternative.Javins didn’t come up with the concept of using a bungee cord or duct tape to attach a high-quality air filter to a box fan to create an effective, budget friendly air purifier.

"But no one had looked at how effective they were for filtering or how safe they were, so that’s what I was interested in doing."Javins is the former Associate Director for Engineering and Utilities at the University of Montana and has over 30 years of heating, ventilation and air conditioning experience.

He volunteered to test these devices, and he says the results were encouraging.

"These can be equivalent to a small- to medium-room air purifier with a HEPA filter in them; reasonably effective for a much lower cost," he says."I actually had 3M Products group test a box fan filter in their chamber that they test room air purifiers. They verified the data I was seeing, so I felt pretty good about the effectiveness of the filter."

But almost three years ago when acrid wildfire smoke settled in like fog over western Montana’s valleys, Javins say Missoula health officials were reluctant to endorse use of these homebrew air purifiers. He says they worried box fans with filters would reduce airflow to the point where they could potentially overheat and catch fire. Almost 5 million box fans were recalled in 2011 due to an electrical failure in the fans’ motors. Those problems were fixed in fans sold after 2012.