Buying off-the-shelf replacement HEPA filters

For an effective air purifier you need a Hepa filter of rating H11 or H13. However when buying a replacement filter, how can you tell if it is a hepa filter or just a car filter or basic HVAC filter being sold as hepa filter ? Right now there are a lot of Filter sellers and makers in the market selling all types of Hepa filters. Our experience after purchasing those filters  and testing them through filter testing equipment we found out that none of them was actually a hepa filter.  They did some cleaning but the cleaning quality was that of a standard AC filter and nothing more. After putting them in an air purifier, you would hardly get any improvement in air quality.  Some local brands of air purifier makers are also using these off the shelf filters being sold by reputable filter makers and without any testing selling the air purifiers. Needless to say it will be a waste of money for an unsuspecting buyer. In the VLOG below, I ll share the performance of some of these commonly available filters through an AQI meter. I ll also share some simple methods to tell if you are actually get a HEPA filter even if you don’t have an AQI meter.  

Also note that any kind of filter does some degree of air cleaning, even if you take a simple cloth, a car filter, an AC filter, an electrostatic filter. The key difference is the efficiency between these filters and a HEPA filter. Most filters will stop around 50% of pollutants, but a HEPA will stop almost 100%, and this makes a big difference in terms of how clean the air will get in your room.

Another confusion that I would like to clarify for our users is the difference between MERV rating and HEPA rating. Both are different standards, MERV being used by USA and HEPA by rest of the world. However MERV rating and HEPA rating are not equivalent. For example a MERV 17 rated filter is equivalent to H11.

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