Ed Lucas on why he won’t go to bed without an air purifier
Fed up with the symptoms of living in a polluted city, Edward Lucas sought help in the latest technology
My best Christmas present was a gas mask. Not the kind I used as a foreign correspondent covering riots in trouble-spots, but a small cloth patch containing hi-tech carbon particles. As I walked and cycled through London, the acrid traffic smog that once choked my lungs and blocked my nose became as sweet as a breeze wafting through a forest glade.
From today, I may need the mask less, as the world’s first ultra-low emissions zone (ULEZ) has come into force across the capital. Highpolluting road users – which includes most cars and vans driving into central London – will need to meet new, tighter standards or be liable for a £12.50 daily charge. Birmingham, Leeds, Derby, Nottingham and Southampton will follow in 2020 with similar schemes.
Public Health England recently laid bare the scale of air pollution in our cities, which is to blame for five in every 100 deaths. It blunts our brains, stunts our children and takes years off our lives.
I used to live in Moscow, so I am no stranger to bad air: our air scrubbers there were festooned with cobwebs of gunk by the end of the week. (Their ionising technology also pumped ozone into the air, which was a different sort of health risk.)
Last week, even Beijing was outscoring London in the clean air stakes. I habitually wake up with a sore throat and stuffed nose, and start the day with a fit of coughing. When I visit my parents in rural Somerset, these symptoms disappear.
At first, I blamed dust mites. My wife duly threw out the bedroom carpet. We took to vacuuming the
Despite the stonking price – £1,200 – the results after three weeks were dramatic
floorboards, curtains, mattress and the cupboards – all in vain. We binned most of our household chemicals, scented candles and other unnecessary polluters. My appearance-conscious wife refuses to give up her hairspray, but I extracted a promise that she would use it only when standing by an open window. I can’t stop the children’s fry-ups – worse for air quality, given that we use a gas cooker, than if they puffed a cigarette – but I have persuaded them to use the extractor fan. Noisy, but cleaner.
It was time to turn to higher technology. We tried out, courtesy of the manufacturers, half a dozen air purifiers, at a cost ranging from a humble £240 to a mighty £1,200. All the devices include carbon filters (like those in my mask), which soak up poisonous gases. They also have Hepa filters for those lethal tiny particles that damage our health.
The most modern machines use a technology called photocatalysis, which blows the nasties through a mesh of titanium dioxide, while zapping them with ultraviolet light. This is particularly good for allergens such as pollen, viruses and bacteria, but it comes at a price.
The engineering constraints are unforgiving. To move lots of air you need a powerful fan. Doing that cheaply means constant whines, rumbles, buzzes and hums. My wife says our bedroom features those noises already.
But packing the technology into a smaller, quieter device means fancy materials, top-of-the-range motors and clever design. Filters – the heart of the machine – are either cheap and useless or costly and effective. The better they work, the sooner they clog up and need replacing. Like printer cartridges, the cost adds up.
After a week of phone calls and scouring the internet, my main conclusion was that business for these companies is booming, that the hype is huge and making comparisons is hard. On-board sensors may provide satisfying readings, but scientists sniff at the results.
Each family member got a machine in their bedroom. My daughter Izzy, 15, is wildly enthusiastic about her Dyson: “I don’t like sleepovers any more because I wake up with a dry throat and stuffy nose.”
Our own bedroom has the top-of
the-range VK Blue Viruskiller (radic8. com). This South Korean space-age contraption features photocatalysis, killing bugs as well as removing pollutants. The vital carbon filters are bargain-priced, at just £12 a pair.
An even handier shoebox-sized version, the Hextio, is also worth a try: it can clean the atmosphere in a small room, or just direct a jet of purified air in the direction of your pillow. It can’t tidy the socks from the floor in my elder son’s bedroom but, on casual inspection, it has banished the smell.
Our machine, the largest in the range, claims to operate to hospital standards. From my wife’s initial reaction, I thought we might both end up there. Mrs Lucas disliked the clunky white box cluttering up our boudoir and the eerie blue light it emitted (until I worked out how to turn it to “night mode”).
But despite the initial froideur, and the stonking price – £1,200 – the results after three weeks were dramatic. Gunk is visible on the filter. But at least that means it is not in our house – or in our bodies. Our dawn chorus of coughing has ceased, and my wife and I both note that the other has stopped snoring.