Which Air Filter is the Best for Smokers?
If you’re a smoker, you know that tobacco smoke is among the clingiest, smelliest smokes around. It makes sense, since it’s essentially the smoke from a burning leaf and some paper.
You like smoking in your house. But you don’t like the lingering scent or the potential for secondhand smoke to other family members. How do we remedy this? Let’s find out.
Why Smokers Need Air FiltersAll of the air in your home is shared between every room. The air in your kitchen is eventually passed to your closet, and then to your bedroom, and then to your bathroom.
Your HVAC system relies on a series of ducts and vents to transfer air around your home. These ducts begin at your intake vent. The air is passed through the cooling process, and then divided up between an array of several ducts, which then port the air into each room of your house.
Your air filter is what cleans your air as it’s recycled through your house. It's located in your intake vent, and catches dust and particles as the air filters through it. This cleans the air before it’s cooled and then diverted to every part of your house.
Even the lowest-quality filter will catch most particles hanging around in your air. But for more fine particles, a higher quality filter is necessary.
Tobacco smoke is one of these finer particles. Tobacco smoke requires higher quality filters in order to keep your air properly clean.
What filter is best for smokers?
Tobacco smoke is particularly tough to get rid of. Molecularly, tobacco smoke is a veritable hodgepodge of chemicals. Hydrocarbons, aldehydes, nitrosamines, and carbon monoxide, just to name a few.
These molecules get suspended in air both on their own and attached to extremely tiny smoke particles. And we really do mean tiny. If you blew up a smoke particle to the size of a baseball, a regular dust particle would be the size of a refrigerator.
That’s not all - because of the volatility of their molecules, smoke particles also smell. They cling to fabric and stick there, making your house smell until you do a deep clean and get rid of it.
To get these particles out of the air, you're going to need a serious filter. Filter efficiencies are measured by MERV (Minimum Efficiency Reporting Value). The best filters have MERV figures of 13 or higher. But these can be expensive.
There’s another option for getting rid of the smoke smell. The answer is carbon.
How do carbon filters work?
Carbon is an incredible atom. It’s uniquely situated on the periodic table in such a way that it bonds to basically everything.
Essentially, each atom has a certain number of valence electrons - that is, electrons that want to “stick” to another atom. Carbon has four of these in a rather high energy state, which makes it particularly ready to bond to most other elements.
Additionally, because it’s a fairly small atom (only 6 each of protons, neutrons, and electrons). This means it can fit snugly into many molecules that appear otherwise complete - like those found in tobacco smoke.
When air passes through a carbon filter, two filtering effects occur simultaneously. First, the traditional fibers of the filter catch all the “big” stuff, like dust and dirt. Then, the carbon will bond with the smaller stuff, like smelly molecules and smoke particles.
This creates a multiplied filtering efficiency, combined with an odor-eliminating effect that leaves your house smelling fresh and clean.
Where do I get a carbon filter?
Carbon air filters are becoming more and more popular. We think that’s a great thing - everyone should have access to affordable, effective filters.
Unfortunately, some of the companies that offer them are not built from the same quality of moral fiber as you and me, and try to pass off fake carbon air filters as the real deal.
That’s not what we’re about. We’re committed to creating and offering the best filters for the best prices. That’s our promise to you, and we keep our promises.
Our MERV 10 Odor Eliminator is a genuine carbon air filter, guaranteed to reduce odors with it’s activated carbon coating. Don’t settle for second-rate. Go straight to the King.
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