Do Air Purifiers Work for Mold (Molding Mold-Free Airspace)?
Is your home the residence of thousands of tiny spores floating through the air causing infection and health complications? Imagine that the surfaces of your home are becoming the resting place of growing mold due to high humidity and low air circulation in your kitchen, bathrooms, and bedrooms. Continue to imagine that you hope to address this problem without the use of toxic cleaners and disinfectants like bleach, Windex, and poisonous ammonia. Can you use an air purifier?
After it has set, there may seem like no simple and effective way that you can restore the purity of your home without adding toxic chemicals and hours of scrubbing to your life. Even then, will the mold not return after their reproductive spores have landed from the air and begun to infest your home for the second (or third!) time. Not only do air purifiers work for mold, but they are also an essential component of keeping mold away and killing spores that rely on poor circulation and humidity.
If you are thinking of using an air purifier to rid your home of mold, review our article on the ways an air purifier works to kill and reduce mold while also protecting your home from spores. By doing so, you can help yourself see that you can stop mold from spreading and coming back through the use of an air purifier, and you will find the answers to the following questions:
- What is mold?
- Why is it becoming such a problem for my home?
- How is the mold spreading?
- Can an air purifier kill the mold and stop it from spreading?
- Which air purifier should I choose for my home?
If you are realizing that poor circulation and high humidity in your home puts you at risk of developing or dealing with a mold problem, knowing a few things about how an air purifier can help and using one to destroy mold in your home can be a simple and effective tool against the respiratory and health complications of mold. Continue reading this article for all the facts and recommendations you need to make a positive improvement with an air purifier.
What Mold Is and Why It’s a Problem
Mold is a kind of fungus that grows and spreads quickly. It can live on almost any surface, reproduce, and cause major problems for your household if the mold goes unaddressed for a long period of time.
Since mold is a fungus, it needs lots of moisture and humidity to grow which means that if you have a mold problem, you also have an issue with moisture accumulation in your home. If there is an issue with moisture accumulation in your home, you might find that your pipes are leaking or there is no circulation of the air in kitchens and bathrooms.
The major problems that mold creates are not just for the health of the humans who are breathing in its spores because as mold spreads it eats organic material like wood and fabric. As for the health conditions that can result from long exposure to mold spores, asthma and allergies are just the start; mold can be toxic to the lungs and brain in high concentrations.
If you are going to address the mold problem in your home, you are going to have to confront the issue of humidity and moisture which is helping the mold to grow, feed on your home, and cause serious medical concerns for your family. That leads us to our next topic of how mold grows which we discuss because it deals directly and opposite to the action of an air purifier.
How Mold Grows
Like any organism, mold needs a few things in order to survive and grow in your home. Basically, those things are moisture and organic matter. Moisture comes from the lack of air circulation and ventilation in your home which is common in poorly constructed bathrooms and kitchens, but the organic matter means that mold feeds on anything that can be eaten such as wood, fabric, paper, etc.
Since it is not practical to remove all organic material such as these from your home, the critical issue becomes dealing with the problem of poor ventilation and air flow. More often than not mold can grow at a humidity level over 60 percent, meaning that you will have to work to lower this threshold below the level comfortable for mold and spores.
Beyond that, it will help to know that mold does not travel simply by reproducing on surfaces. It also sends out spores which are like little seeds that float through the air in search of moisture and organic matter on which to feed and further reproduce. Sometimes the mold problem throughout a house is caused by a single patch of mold that has effectively multiplied through spores, and sometimes the mold problem comes from spores that have entered the home from the outside.
Since the critical issue of exterminating the mold then has two parts (reduce moisture and kill spores), many people turn to air purifiers to help them in their efforts, but is it effective? Let’s find out if the action of an air purifier is effective at killing mold and what recommendations can be made for the most effective models.
How Air Purifiers Kill Mold
Obviously, the mold that has taken root on a surface and exists as a spore-producing patch cannot be simply addressed by an air purifier which does not clean surfaces, but using an air purifier remains critical for the effective killing of mold in a home. The key is that it works to remove and neutralize spores that are floating through the air in search of moisture and food to reproduce.
For example, if you have an air purifier, especially with a HEPA filter, the machine will circulate the all the air in your room or home over the course of an hour or hours and remove mold spores as it circulates.
Air will easily pass through the filter of the air purifiers, but mold spores will get stuck in the filter which allows you to enjoy air that is clean and free of irritating spores. If the mold is coming from inside or outside of the house, the air purifier will work the same to produce clean, mold-free air that will stop the mold from finding additional places to land and multiply.
Best Air Purifier for Mold
You may be delighted to hear that there is a way for you to clean the air of pollutants like spores and also stop mold from taking root in your home, but perhaps you are uncertain of which model will make the best long-term addition to your home and get the job of mold extermination done. There are some key features which you will want to look for, and we make our own expert recommendation of an air purifier at the close of this section.
In your fight against mold, an air purifier is an excellent addition to your weaponry, but you want to be sure that the air purifier is powerful enough to circulate air from multiple angles and multiple times per hour while creating a condition of constant circulation. This will ensure that no spores or other pollutants are left behind and that your air is truly clean as it goes through the filter multiple times per hour.
It is even better if the air purifier is designed with an advanced, multi-layer filtration system with specially designed filters for mold or similar contaminants. You should aim for a HEPA efficiency filter that captures 99 percent of particles down to less than a micron. If possible, you should ensure that the filters are designed to resist mold from growing on the actual filter since that will defeat your purpose of creating mold-free air.
What model of air purifiers has multiple filtration systems and the power to circulate the air of a home multiple times per hour down to less than a micron with an incredible 99 percent capture rate?! We recommend the Coway Airmega 400 Smart Air Purifier to remove the mold from up to 1500 square feet, a huge space for air purifiers.
The system is beautiful, but it is also highly powerful and efficient with four types of HEPA filters. The dual air vents allow the air of a room to enter through the rear and exit through the front clean, odorless air without the fear of inefficiency or cross contamination. The device offers a stylish look and addition to your home furniture as well as a lifetime warranty.
Concluding Remarks on Air Purifiers and Mold
The moisture- and mold-killing power of an air purifier is scientifically effective and a non-toxic way to address a growing problem of mold multiplication in the home. By using an air filter, you can stop spores from spreading and overtaking all the surfaces of your home with toxic, home-eating mold. A HEPA filtration system like the Coway Airmega 400 Smart Air Purifier is recommended for capturing nearly 100 percent of the spores mold uses to reproduce.
