Air Purifiers for Formaldehyde Removal

Maybe you just moved into a brand new doublewide mobile home?

Or maybe it's a new site-built house with gas appliances and wall to wall formaldehyde emissions.

Sold the ancestral home and used the proceeds to buy a retirement RV and go south for the winter?

Cool.

Until the FEMA RV trailer formaldehyde scandal hit the wire.

You just applied multiple coats of oil-based paint, which takes up to 18 months to out-gas, to your heirloom furniture from great grandma.

Yikes.

The cabinet guy said the smell would only last a week....

Or could it be the new $10,000 leather furniture?

Hotel California: Toxic Traps

But everyone should have a long term plan for purging their lives of these toxins.

The purchase of an air purifier should be considered a temporary solution to continuous formaldehyde emissions in the home.

When it comes to gas phase Volatile Organic Chemicals (VOCs) like formaldehyde, the great majority of air purifiers, despite advertising claiming the ability to eliminate VOC pollutants, simply cannot do the job.

VOCs go right through paper HEPA filter media, which is designed to capture only particles. Carbon impregnated polyester wrap around prefilters will capture formaldehyde for maybe the first three weeks. Some of these you can see right through.

Air purifiers must be specifically designed to remove formaldehyde, most are not.

There is little real evidence on the effectiveness of residential purifiers at removing airborne formaldehyde.

Continuous source emissions which come from building materials or furnishings are the most difficult for air purification equipment to eliminate.

In industrial settings, expensive real-time monitoring and air scrubbing is required for formaldehyde abatement.

Residential air cleaner VOC removing performance over long periods of time is problematic, since subjective odor detection or symptom relief may be the main metrics for evaluation.

In my opinion, formaldehyde is dangerous at levels which may not provoke "allergy" symptoms. Individuals chronically exposed to aldehydes may loose the ability to smell them.

If our only method of timing the replacement of costly gas-phase filters is the return of odors or symptoms, we haven't really eliminated enough of the formaldehyde.

So purifiers that actually remove airborne formaldehyde are going to be expensive, and must run continuously on high fan speeds. To be effective, filter media should be replaced much more frequently than manufacturer recommended intervals.

Which Technology?

An air purifier with at least 6 lbs. of activated carbon combined with activated alumina/potassium permanganate and/or potassium iodide would be my main choice. Plain activated carbon won't be nearly as effective.

In outdoor air formaldehydes have a short half-life, just a few hours. Ultraviolet frequencies in sunlight create reactive hydroxyl radicals, and formaldehyde is readily photo-oxidized to carbon dioxide.

But indoors there is relative darkness.

This suggests that oxidizing air cleaners might be the answer to formaldehyde.

Many ozone generators are advertised as being suitable for formaldehyde abatement.

They are not, because the source is a continuous background emission, and ozone concentrations high enough to suppress these are toxic.

Aldehydes are often absorbed onto surfaces and textiles, like carpets, furniture, and curtains. These will take months to outgas.

Ozone is well suited to one time shock treatments, it is perfect for eliminating entrenched mold.

But if you are living in a new mobile home, or worse, a US government FEMA trailer, and absolutely cannot escape, a high powered ozone generator rental might help.

Let it run for 72 hours while your family stays elsewhere.

Photocatalytic Oxidation (PCO)

Photocatalysts destroy indoor air pollutants using ultraviolet light energy bombarding a light-sensitive surface. When energized, oxidation and reduction reactions occur on the catalyst surface, converting organic pollutants to carbon dioxide and water.