👉FREE Air Quality Solutions Guide: midd.me/euyH
👉BEST AIR PURIFIER RANKINGS: airpurificationeducation.com/...
Is Your Air Quality KILLING You? Air Purification PM10 and PM2.5
This is the most important video I have made to date and I want you to really focus on the information and overall message I am sharing today. In this video we are going to discuss PM10 and PM2.5 and the differences between the two air quality standards. We’ll define what they mean and also we are going to A) discuss how important or reliable they are when trying to figure out the quality of our air and B) how this all relates to choosing a sufficient air purification solution for our needs in our specific environments. I am in the process of learning a lot of new and important things about air quality in my recent research and I am drawing many important conclusions that I believe affect everyone’s health literally for years to come - so please listen carefully.
We will start with PM10 - the PM part stands for Particulate Matter and the 10 stands for particles from 10 microns in diameter to 2.5 microns.
Is Your Air Quality KILLING You? Air Purification PM10 and PM2.5
If you remember from my last video (show thumb) - humans can only see particles that are 40 microns in size and larger with the naked eye - so we cannot actually see particles that are 10 microns and smaller. For scale, a human strand of hair is about 70 microns give or take 30 microns depending on the thickness of the hair.
PM10 is suspended coarse particulate matter - and they can be either solid or liquid. Again, from the last video - there are 3 main types of particulate matter (Coarse particles which are 2.5 to 100 microns in diameter and they make up ONLY 1% of the air we breath. Fine Particles which are .1 to 2.5 microns which make up 9% of all the particles in the air that we breath. And Ultrafine particles which are .003 microns to .01 microns and they make up 90% of the particles in the air we breathe. PM10 falls under the Coarse Particles heading.
PM10 can be floating dust or aerosols. We all know what dust is - but we may not all know the definition of aerosol? An aerosol may be defined as a suspension of particles or droplets in the air and some examples of this are be airborne dust, mists, fog, haze, fumes or even smoke - all are considered aerosols. So PM10 includes a wide variety of particles such as smoke, dust, soot, mold, pollen, salts, acids, and even metals.
Is Your Air Quality KILLING You? Air Purification PM10 and PM2.5
The current Federal Health Standard for PM10 is set at 150 mg/m3 (Milligrams Per Cubic Meter of air) averaged over a 24-hour period, and 50 mg/m3 (Milligrams Per Cubic Meter of air) for an annual average. A Milligram per cubic meter (mg/m3) is a unit of measurement for concentration. We are not going to get too technical with this - just know it is a measurement of particle concentration in air per cubic meter. The more particles in the air - the higher the concentration. The less particles in the air - the lower the concentration.
Of note: These standardizations were set in 1987 and they haven’t changed since then. This is an important point and one we’ll come back to later.
Now, lets talk about PM2.5. PM2.5 focuses on smaller particles which are 2.5 microns in diameter and less. I find the “and less” part of the definition to be very vague so I tried to find the exact definition of what “and less” exactly means. I mean 2.5 and less is a very gray answer - 2.5 is the ceiling so what exactly is the floor on this standard? So, I did some checking around and received some different answers from different sources which is par for the course when researching information on smaller particulates… Some sources say PM2.5 goes down to Fine Particles and the smallest sized fine particles would end at .1 microns… but ChatGPT said PM2.5 also encompasesses Ultrafine particles so I’m gonna go with that definition for PM2.5. And if it is incorrect - don’t blame me - I’ll just throw ChatGPT under the bus. As you can see there appears to be some confusion from source to source as to the correct sized particles that PM2.5 actually deal with. That said, if ChatGPT is correct and that’s the true floor then - PM2.5 focuses on particles from 2.5 microns all the way down to .003 microns.