Residential Air Cleaners

This online engineering PDH interactive presentation provides a brief guidance on air cleaners for residential use, and serves as a reference for anyone who designs, builds, operates, inspects, maintains, or otherwise works with buildings, heating, ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC) equipment, and/or portable air cleaners/sanitizers.

The best way to address residential indoor air pollution usually is to control or eliminate the source of the pollutants and to ventilate the home with clean outdoor air. But source control is sometimes impractical as a remedial measure, and ventilation may be limited by weather conditions or the levels of contaminants in the outdoor air. If the usual methods of managing indoor air pollutants are insufficient, air-cleaning devices may be useful.

This presentation focuses on air cleaners for residential use; it does not address air cleaners used in large or commercial structures such as office buildings, schools, large apartment buildings, or public buildings. The presentation begins by providing general information about the types of pollutants affected by air cleaners. It also discusses the factors to consider when deciding to use an air-cleaning device, and if so, the types and effectiveness of available air-cleaning devices, and the metrics that can be used to compare these devices. The presentation also addresses information from intervention studies that show the impact of air cleaners on health and on health markers.

This 3 PDH online interactive presentation is particularly useful to residential housing design professionals, public health officials, and indoor air quality professionals. It is also applicable to home services professionals, builders, remodelers, contractors, and architects.