Warning: Breathe At Your Own Risk

Clean Air Solution by Camfil USA. Leader in Air Filters for Commercial and Industrial applications.

Unfortunately, we’re all familiar with air pollution. It’s an inescapable part of modern life. There are cars and trucks spewing fumes throughout our cities, smokestacks giving birth to black clouds over industrial parks, and monstrous machines spraying unpronounceable chemicals all over the countryside. It doesn’t matter where you live, the air you breathe is full of particles that, in the end, are poisonous to your body.

There’s Something In The Air

The signs of air pollution are easy to see in our environment. You can’t miss the big black cloud hovering over a factory. Your eyes become irritated and your throat closes when a badly tuned diesel truck rolls by, leaving you to suck down the fumes of burned oil and fuel. You can see, smell, and even taste the pollution in the air. The signs and the danger are obvious.

The World Health Organization estimates that about 7 million people die prematurely every year as a result of simply breathing polluted air. That’s one out of eight deaths globally. Air pollution has been linked to higher occurrences of health problems like heart disease, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lung cancer and acute lower respiratory infections in children. In fact, the WHO has listed air pollution as the largest single environmental health risk in the world.

An Invisible Intruder

While all of that might sound scary, it’s not even the worst part. The really scary part of all of this is that often indoor air pollution can be worse than what we see outdoors. Poor ventilation and air circulation systems can actually cause the buildup of toxic particles in the air we breathe as we go about our days.

You walk out of the urban smog at the end of your morning commute to work, relieved to be entering a new environment where everything seems cleaner and quieter, but you just might be better off outside. The effects are not so obvious. You can’t see it. You don’t smell anything strange. There’s no taste in your mouth. But it’s there. It’s there all day long, as you put in your 8 hours (or more), day after day, month after month. It is slowly but surely compromising your health and shortening your life.

The WHO considers indoor air pollution to be a factor in 3.8 million premature deaths each year caused by non communicable diseases like stroke, heart disease and lung cancer. As design goals have changed over the years, with more focus on energy efficiency, buildings have become increasingly closer to being airtight structures, which causes a buildup of toxic contaminants in the air — ultimately making the problem of indoor air pollution worse.

The Damage Is Reversible

The good news is that this is not a problem without a solution. In fact, the solution is fairly simple. Increasing ventilation and employing air filtering systems in any building will decrease levels of harmful particles in the air, and help to improve the overall health of anyone who spends any significant amount of time in that building.

A study conducted in 2011 found that people exposed to filtered air for 7 days showed 30% lower levels of C-reactive Protein, an indicator of inflammation and precursor to cardiovascular problems. Another study showed that by increasing ventilation rates and improving air quality in office environments, worker productivity is increased. Finally, a study conducted in 2015 showed that office workers scored an average of 101% higher on cognitive tests when working in an environment with higher air quality as opposed to working in a standard office environment.

Improving the quality of the air around us not only helps eliminate bad effects caused by pollution, it has beneficial effects. We actually function better when we are breathing cleaner air. Our organs, and especially our brains, work better when the air we breathe is purer.

The Solution Can Be Simple

Changing the quality of the air in your home or work environment doesn’t need to be a major project. Simply using proper filters in existing ventilation systems can make a big difference, but there are also stand-alone air purification solutions that can be used virtually anywhere if modifying central ventilation systems is not an option.

Camfil provides solutions for just about any type of environment, from making the air in your home healthier to meeting the strictest standards required by technical and medical cleanrooms. Air purifiers like the Camfil Air Purifier CITY work great in settings like offices, schools, and even medical facilities.

For larger areas, or locations that require a higher level of filtration, the CamCleaner line can take on everything from welding smoke to chemical fumes, removing it all through ultra efficient Absolute™ Hepa filters. CamCleaner systems are available in vertical, horizontal and portable configurations. There’s even a ceiling mountable unit. You can put one virtually anywhere to remove harmful pollutants from the air.

Changing The Air Can Change Your Life

The benefits of taking steps to improve the quality of indoor air are both numerous and well documented. You can improve your day-to-day life and the well being of everyone around you, from family and friends to coworkers and customers.

Indoor air pollution is not a static thing.  It builds up and gets worse with time. By taking advantage of air cleaning devices and filters, you can stop the process and reverse the effects that this invisible killer has had on you.

The post Warning: Breathe At Your Own Risk appeared first on Air Filters for Clean Air .

from Air Filters for Clean Air

Reducing The Big Costs Of Big Data

Clean Air Solution by Camfil USA. Leader in Air Filters for Commercial and Industrial applications.

Camfil data center customers have reported annual energy savings in the six-figure range.

In the industrial age, companies built warehouses. They needed ever more space to store the results of their massive product manufacturing operations. In today’s information age, companies build data centers. The idea is basically the same, it’s just that the product and storage facility have evolved. Information is the product, and data centers are the warehouses where the product is stored.

Everything Is On The Internet

There is very little that hasn’t been pushed onto the Internet somehow. Unfathomable amounts of information and communication zip through wires and bounce between cellular towers and satellites, all to bring us the instant gratification that we’ve become so accustomed to. The network is vast, and its storage needs are mind-boggling.

Big Data Requires Big Storage

It is estimated that there are over 300 million data centers in the U.S. alone. Some may not be much bigger than a storage closet, housing just a few computers to keep a small business running. Others sprawl out, covering millions of square feet, providing a home for thousands of high tech machines that never power down.

Just imagine how much data needs to be stored, and instantly accessible, to keep a company like FedEx running, with all of the packages they track and deliver, worldwide, in just one day. Then think about how many other companies exist that require this type of data storage and retrieval — Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, Google, etc. It is data centers that make all of this possible.

Keeping It Clean And Cool

In order for data centers to function and perform at optimal levels, there are strict environmental conditions that must be maintained. The two biggest enemies of all data centers, large and small, are heat and dust. High temperatures and dust particles in the air cannot only cause performance problems, they can cause complete failure of computer parts and systems.

We’ve all had enough basic experience with personal computers to understand that cleanliness and heat can have a big impact on their performance. Think about how hot the bottom of your laptop sometimes gets when it’s sitting on your lap, and imagine what that kind of heat generation would add up to in a room with one thousand, or even one hundred thousand, computers running. Keeping free of dust and eliminating heat from data center rooms is an absolute top priority. Failure to do either means (a possibly catastrophic) failure of the systems housed within the data center.

Big Data Means Big Power

The only thing that might be more important than air filtration and cooling in a data center environment is making sure the electricity never runs out. Between the computers themselves and the air conditioning equipment needed to maintain the environment, data centers use a massive amount of power.

Estimates say that approximately 2% of all the power consumed in the U.S. is used by data centers, with an astounding 32% of that being drawn by their air conditioning systems.

All Up In The Air

Most computer systems built today are already as power-saving friendly as they can be. Moving parts are constantly being reduced, and unused peripherals are shut down until they’re needed again, keeping power usage at a minimum. This means that the only viable way for a data center to cut down on power usage, and costs, is to work with their air conditioning systems. They’re obviously not going to start turning off computers.

With more than 30% of power consumption going to the air conditioning systems, adjustments here can make a big difference in performance and costs. Of course, having systems installed that are as energy efficient as possible is a big step, but there is another small, and not so obvious, adjustment that can be made to achieve big results.

Small Parts Have Big Effects

Air filters installed in the A/C systems are somewhat of a double-edged sword. They are necessary to filter dust particles from the air, but they also inhibit the airflow, creating more work for fans in the system, ultimately driving power costs up and efficiency down.

Poor quality and badly maintained air filters in a data center ventilation system can cause as much as a 30% variance in the efficiency of the entire system. It really is simple. If it’s hard for the system to push air through the filters because they are improperly constructed, or overused and clogged, the system will consume more power and take longer to achieve the same result as a system running with high quality, clean filters.

By choosing filters that are properly made for the environment and system in use, and making sure they are properly changed and maintained, a data center can cut down on a significant portion of their power usage and, ultimately, operating costs. It’s one of the simplest and easiest changes to make, and it can produce real and measurable benefits.

Camfil offers a variety of air filtration solutions that will meet the needs of any data center, large or small. Both medium and high efficiency air filters are available, with the ability to filter out particles down to the sub-micron particle level.

All air filter products have a 5-Star Energy Cost Index (ECI) Rating — the highest rating available. The filters also offer the longest life and lowest average pressure drop over the life of the filter, guaranteed.

Camfil air filters can reduce energy expenditures by as much as 40% when compared to competitive products. Illustrating the tremendous benefits that can be achieved by simply choosing the right air filters, some Camfil data center customers have reported annual energy savings in the six-figure range.

The post Reducing The Big Costs Of Big Data appeared first on Air Filters for Clean Air .

from Air Filters for Clean Air

Camfil Introduces the City M Indoor Air Purifier

Clean Air Solution by Camfil USA. Leader in Air Filters for Commercial and Industrial applications.

The company’s New City M Air Purifier maintains healthier indoor environments by removing a wide array of contaminants.

Stockholm, Sweden – July 1, 2016: Camfil, a world leader in air filtration and clean air solutions, recently announced the release of the Air Purifier City M Freestanding Indoor Air Purifier, a cutting-edge unit that has been designed to remove odors, dust, and many other harmful contaminants from the air.

“The Camfil City M comes equipped with particulate and molecular level filters that are designed to significantly improve indoor air quality (IAQ) in rooms or areas of up to 800 square feet,” said Kevin Wood, Camfil USA’s Vice President of Sales and Marketing .“The City M is designed to remove a broad array of particulates, contaminants and dust from the air, and can be used in hospitals, department stores, offices, schools, and even homes where a consistently high quality of air purification is needed.”

The City M is designed to operate on –120V AC and features an HEPA/Molecular filter for superior performance, and has been listed as Allergy-Friendly Quality Tested and approved by ECARF (European Centre for Allergy Research Foundation) a well-respected authority on allergy- friendly products.

“We believe the City M can significantly improve overall life and health using a unique three stage filtration system to reduce the number of particles in the air by millions per cubic feet in a matter of hours,” Wood continued. “By removing these contaminants, there will be far fewer incidences of the most common “bad air” symptoms, which include headaches, coughing, watery eyes, allergic reactions, nausea, and skin rashes.”

This is particularly beneficial to businesses, since many of these problems cause people to miss work, which reduces employee efficiency, and costs both employees and employers money.

“Installing one of our City M air purifiers in a place of business can significantly reduce the amount of allergy and asthma suffering employees endure,” Wood concluded. “With less environmental stressors, employees will be happier and healthier, and business owners will benefit from increases in productivity and decreases in absenteeism.”

 

About

Camfil is the world leader in air filtration and clean air solutions, with 23 production plants and R&D centers in the Americas, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region. For more information, visit us online at www.camfil.us or call us toll-free at 888.599.6620.

The post Camfil Introduces the City M Indoor Air Purifier appeared first on Air Filters for Clean Air .

from Air Filters for Clean Air