Best rating air purifier:
What does it mean?


You often hear or read about this claim from some air purifier manufacturer:

"This is the best rating air purifier out there."

Fine. But what is this claim based on? Is there really a rating system for air purifiers you can trust?

Ratings can be tricky things, which makes identifying the best rating air purifier.

And let's be clear here: When we are talking about ratings, we are talking about how reviewers rate air purifiers.

No consensus

It's hard to believe, especially considering indoor air quality is a major health issue in today's well-sealed homes, but there is no standard system for rating air purifiers.

It is certainly one reason why many people wonder if air purifiers even work.

After all, "real" health issues, like regulating the pills in your medicine cabinet, have strict standards. Why not these things called "air purifiers?"

That's not to say there haven't been concerted efforts to come to some kind of consensus.

Unfortunately efforts by industry trade groups, regulators and even legislators to set standards have simply not come to fruition.

One effort to identify the best rating air purifier

The Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers (AHAM), an industry group, has made an effort to enforce a set of guidelines with limited success.

As discussed in the article on best air purifiers, the association has created a unit of rating known as the CADR numbers.

CADR stands for Clean Air Delivery Rating. The seal lists three numbers, one for:
  • tobacco smoke
  • pollen
  • dust
The higher the number, the faster the unit filters the air, thus the larger room the air purifier can clean.

The problem

The CADR number is strictly voluntary.

AHAM can not require air purifiers to be tested and AHAM itself doesn't fall under any requirements to open up its testing criteria and results for review, which leaves some manufacturers less than interested in participating.

Consumer Reports

The venerable third-party testing agency has made an effort at testing and rating some air cleaners.

Those tests, however, have reviewed only a handful of air cleaners, meant only to sample the industry as a whole. They won't identify the best rating air purifier by themselves.

More than anything, what its tests have revealed is just how unhealthy poorly designed electrostatic air purifiers can be since they release unhealthy ozone into the air.

By contrast, it has shown little about the quality of HEPA filtering air purifiers, one of the most popular air purifier technologies.

EPA and ALA

What about other government agencies, most specifically the American Lung Association and the Environmental Protection Agency?

In the end, neither one has drawn up any formal requirements for air purifiers. In general, the stance of both agencies is that source control is the most important way to clean indoor air quality.

One thing on which both are clear: An air cleaner that releases ozone is not a good choice.

So ...

What's the bottom line?

Testing of purifiers has fallen to the manufacturers themselves or to third-party testers who offer unreliable results, if only because many of them also sell air purifiers and can't be trusted to offer unbiased reporting.

The way to find the best rating air purifier?