Connect
← Return to Any thoughts on air purifiers and improving air quality?
Discussion
Any thoughts on air purifiers and improving air quality?
Asthma & Allergy | Last Active: Dec 25, 2024 | Replies (14)Comment receiving replies
@cneville1 Humidity is an issue causing increased mold growth. Have they considered room dehumidifiers in addition to air filtration? if you have mold inside the air filter units, all of that needs to be cleaned and disinfected and new filters replaced otherwise it just distributes mold spores or dust, and of course filters must be replaced on a regular basis. You could take your concerns to a county health department, and they may render a decision on what should be done. That would kind of put you in an uncomfortable position. There may also be mold in the building itself and in their duct work and it may be a bigger problem.
I think consulting a physician is a good idea, however, their opinion may not matter to those in charge. I don't know the specs on your air filters, and there is varying quality of filtration. Some can filter out very small particles as well as pollen and spores.
One suggestion I had heard about is to construct your own inexpensive air filter with the best furnace filters you can buy along with a simple box fan called a Corsi -Rosenthal box. You could do that as a test to see if it improves the situation. You can learn about that in this post. There is a link to a website for the Corsi Rosenthal Foundation with free information on how to construct it. If you make your own box and are still getting mold growth with all new filters, then humidity must be lowered as well and/or it may be a building problem. Testing your own do it yourself filters would give you some control of what's happening and as well as being a test of the environmental conditions in your wrestling room. The discussion is about ultra purification with carbon and HEPA filtration and that may be interesting as well. The suggestion about the Corsi Rosenthal box was made by a member as an economical way to solve a problem rather than jumping into expensive air filtration units.
https://connect.mayoclinic.org/comment/1181180/
Replies to "@cneville1 Humidity is an issue causing increased mold growth. Have they considered room dehumidifiers in addition..."
One thing I have heard about the filter and box fan solution is that pushing air through a good filter can overly stress the fan, since it’s not built for that, and be a potential fire hazard. Has anyone else heard that?
Connect
"Humidity is an issue causing increased mold growth. Have they considered room dehumidifiers in addition to air filtration? if you have mold inside the air filter units, all of that needs to be cleaned and disinfected and new filters replaced otherwise it just distributes mold spores or dust, and of course filters must be replaced on a regular basis. You could take your concerns to a county health department, and they may render a decision on what should be done. That would kind of put you in an uncomfortable position. There may also be mold in the building itself and in their duct work and it may be a bigger problem."
The building is brand new and after an inspection, the only place any mold was found was in the air purifiers. We just recently asked that the maintanence crew look into figuring out why our air exchange system doesn't control the humidity caused by our wrestlers better than it does. I agree we need dehumidifiers, not purifiers in that building but no one is listening. They think the air purifiers are keeping up with the humidity and that we need to simply change the filters more often. The problem is that that doesn't happen. Ive been told that they are being changed or cleaned twice weekly and I have pictures of mold growing on the same filter for two weeks now, so I know they aren't getting changed. The purifiers in the actual wrestling room have not been running the past two weeks and we haven't had a single respiratory related illness in that time. Now the flu has been running like a river through our school but we keep sick kids out of practice and the mats are cleaned daily.
Thanks for your response and suggestions! Looking into them as we speak!!!