“Better Air Purifiers” by Jeff Kaufman 🔸

<p> Are you looking for a project where you could substantially improve indoor air quality, with benefits both to general health and reducing pandemic risk? </p><p> I've written a bunch about air purifiers over the past few years, and its frustrating how bad commercial market is. </p> <p> The most glaring problem is the widespread use of HEPA filters. These are very effective filters that, unavoidably, offer significant resistance to air flow. HEPA is a great option for filtering air in single pass, such as with an outdoor air intake or a biosafety cabinet, but it's the wrong set of tradeoffs for cleaning the air that's already in the room. Air passing through a HEPA filter removes 99.97% of particles, but then it's mixed back in with the rest of the room air. If you can instead remove 99% of particles from 2% more air, or 90% from 15% more [...]</p> <p>---</p> <p><b>First published:</b><br/> May 11th, 2025 </p> <p><b>Source:</b><br/> <a href="https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/8BEqanpJFGhisETBi/better-air-purifiers?utm_source=TYPE_III_AUDIO&utm_medium=Podcast&utm_content=Source+URL+in+episode+description&utm_campaign=ai_narration" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/8BEqanpJFGhisETBi/better-air-purifiers</a> </p> <p>---</p> <p>Narrated by <a href="https://type3.audio/?utm_source=TYPE_III_AUDIO&utm_medium=Podcast&utm_content=Narrated+by+TYPE+III+AUDIO&utm_term=ea_forum&utm_campaign=ai_narration" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">TYPE III AUDIO</a>.</p> <p>---</p><div style="max-width: 100%";><p><strong>Images from the article:</strong></p><a href="https://res.cloudinary.com/lesswrong-2-0/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/mirroredImages/bBX46cBpbruv2kJh5/bcyipyknawmvyuu891vl" target="_blank"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/lesswrong-2-0/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/mirroredImages/bBX46cBpbruv2kJh5/bcyipyknawmvyuu891vl" alt="Air filters arranged in octagonal shape around ceiling fan." style="max-width: 100%;" /></a><p><em>Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try <a href="https://pocketcasts.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">Pocket Casts</a>, or another podcast app.</em></p></div>