Air purifier only psychological comfort

“Buying an air purifier is just a comfort to yourself. Opening windows and ventilating is more effective than opening a machine to health.” In recent days, the continuous haze weather in the central and eastern regions of China, the Beijing PM2.5 index exploded, and for a time, air purifiers. Explosive sales. On January 16, some experts pointed out that air purifiers that are frequently used for RMB 2,000 to RMB 3,000 are basically ineffective for PM2.5.

Yesterday, the reporter visited a Beijing appliance store and saw that the price of air purifiers is now between 2,000 and 4,000 yuan. Many brands of air purifiers have been tagged with functional slogans in addition to formaldehyde and PM2.5 rivals. Some air purifiers claim to have reached the medical grade and can remove air fine particles below PM0.3. The manager of the business said that only two or three units were sold in the past day, and now there are more than 100 units sold on a daily basis. “Air purifiers with prices ranging from RMB 2,000 to RMB 3,000 are best-selling.”

It is understood that PM2.5 refers to particulates with a diameter of less than or equal to 2.5 microns in the atmosphere, also known as lung-infiltrated particulates. Its diameter is less than 1/20 of the thickness of human hair, PM2.5 particle size is small, contains a large number of toxic and harmful substances and has a long residence time in the atmosphere, it is not easy to clear in the circulation, open environment . Li Xiaoqun, a researcher at the Jilin Provincial Academy of Social Sciences, pointed out that existing air purifiers basically do not work for PM2.5, and only really advanced ones are extremely effective. Even if it can be filtered out, it is only within a small area, and the whole house cannot be filtered.

The reporter learned that the state has not issued relevant industry standards for the function of air purifiers. At present, air purifiers are not listed in the national compulsory certification list and do not require functional certification. They only need to pass the safety quality certification and the revised GB/T18801-2008 "Air Purifier" standard by the end of 2008. Since the standard only detects the purifying effect of the purifier within 1 hour, many of the certification bodies' inspections are also data reports issued in the laboratory environment, so the real effect remains to be verified.

Liu Jingsheng, deputy director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention at the Hebei Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention, believes that consumers who buy purifiers solely for hazy weather are more comfortable buying products than buying them. In fact, in addition to extreme haze weather, window ventilation is still more effective than opening the machine.