Commercially available air purifiers can reduce the power of airborne viruses to infect others, according to a new report.
Researchers found that the air purifiers reduced infectivity by up to 99.98% when they used COVID-19 strains, flu and RSV viruses, the team said. The report was published in PLoS ONE on Nov. 22.
Air ions can reduce viable bacteria, mold and virus counts. However, a lot of studies use small test enclosures with target microbes and ion sources in close quarters. The researchers wanted to see how well ion performance was in real-world spaces. Therefore, they conducted experiments in a large, room-size chamber. Researchers used a bipolar air ion device that included Needle Point Bipolar ionization (NPBI) technology to deliver negative and positive ions at the same time.
Influenza A and B, human Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) and SARS-CoV-2 alpha and delta strains were used to check how well the air purifiers worked. The average ion concentrations ranged from 4,100 to 24,000 per polarity over 60-minute and 30-minute time spans. Trials using real-world virus concentrations reduced infectivity for Influenza A and B, RSV and SARS-CoV-2 delta by 88.3% 99.98% in 30 minutes, whereas trials using excessive concentrations of the viruses showed viruses decreased anywhere from 49.5% to 61.2% in the same time span.
The findings led to four conclusions: Bipolar ionization works to lower infectious airborne viruses in large indoor spaces; all ion levels tested lowered virus infectivity; the real-world virus concentrations used quickly inactivated respiratory virus as compared to artificially high laboratory concentrations; and using the air purifier in a large space showed benefits of NPBI technology. The results could be adapted to long-term care communities including nursing homes.
“These findings strongly support the addition of NPBI ion technology to building management strategies aimed to protect occupants from contracting and spreading infective respiratory viruses indoors,” the authors wrote.
The news comes as another recent study found that air purifiers don’t do much to stop viruses from spreading. However, the experiments in that study weren’t the same as the ones in the aforementioned trial. The other recent study cited germicidal lights and high efficiency particulate air filtration units, specifically.
