Your air conditioner can’t keep your safe from damaging air pollution

by Amili R. SEO

It is completely true that the air quality inside your home is directly related to the outdoor air quality. And if you think you can escape the disaster by locking yourself inside your room with your AC on, it’s time to rethink. This is the most widely chosen option to combat rising air pollution, but the truth is that your AC might not be able to save from the disastrous air pollution. Always keep in mind that ACs don’t provide supply of clean air.

Big claims

ACs provide air from outside after cooling it down and have some general dust and odor filtering elements. But with external air dangerously infected with toxins that can easily penetrate our blood stream and cause grave health hazards, anyone can guess how healthy the air is being provided. In other words, you are breathing a lot much the same air as outside with marginally less PM10 (dust) and odor, which anyhow are the lesser venoms prevailing in our urban air.

The truth is that most of the air conditioners in India don’t feature the technology to wipe out gaseous pollutants such as NOx, SO2, benzene and ozone, among others. Technology to eradicate severe pollutants like PM2.5 from air hasn’t even been completely evolved; world’s first ACs which can truly clean air of PM2.5 have only been prepared in the last couple of years, still years away from large-scale production and reach of your pockets.

Do you ponder upon that the mustiness prevailing in your air-conditioned room is an indicator of healthy environment? In actual, your indoor air most likely is a lot more toxic than outdoor air. This will be so due to extra burden of indoor air pollutants such as volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and radiation. Most indoor air pollutants are established or supposed carcinogens. Indoor air pollution gets even more dangerous in air-conditioned regions as the restricted ventilation and air change tricks pollutants and builds up their concentration, augmenting exposure and health hazard. This is one of the points why America and Europe have strict indoor air quality standards for their buildings as they are aware that even with cleaner air externally, their people can get actually sick due to indoor air pollution, elevated by air conditioning. In India, there are no indoor air quality standards to begin with. There it is recommended to open the windows for few hours regularly to make the toxins leave the area.

Market understand the truth and that is why it is already curving with air purifiers, regardless of air conditioners in India. There are different types and sizes of these air purifiers in the market, expanding from relatively cheaper table-top models to urbane and expensive whole-house systems. Some air cleaners are very much effective in wiping out coarse particles, while others, including most table-top models, are much less so. Similar to ACs even air cleaners are typically not designed to remove gaseous pollutants or PM2.5.