Ionic Air Purifier Review - Efficacy and Efficiency Tests

Ionic air purifiers exist to combat airborne contaminants that are invisible to the human eye. They employ beneficial reactive agents that are also invisible to users. How then shall a user know if the purifier is doing what it claims or just burning electricity? A good place to start would be a properly conducted review. A quality review must begin by focusing on user safety. Safety, which can be further classified into 2 separate categories, has been covered at length in this author's 2 articles.

An ionic air purifier review must also include 2 other equally critical criteria:

(1) Efficacy Test - the purifier technology, firmly grounded in sound scientific theory, must be proven to work in a laboratory;

(2) Efficiency Test - the lab-tested purifier technology must be successfully transplanted into an appliance that replicates the same laboratory results in the users' setting at home, in school, or the workplace. Such demanding tests require substantial resources quite beyond those of the ordinary user. The Efficacy Test must come under the purview of a laboratory and even then, a GLP-certified laboratory.

GLP, which stands for Good Laboratory Practice is a set of principles formulated by the OECD to ensure the generation of high quality and reliable test data. The Efficiency Test is even harder to achieve with consistency and objectivity since it has to be conducted on user locations. Notwithstanding these obstacles, an ionic air purifier review must include a proper assessment of the efficacy and efficiency of the ionic air purifier. Proper tests include most, if not all, of the following characteristics:

(1) A controlled experiment

• This involves the rigorous testing of an unproven statement known as a hypothesis;
• A clear concise iteration of the science behind the technology;
• Control check - the effects of an operating ionic air purifier in a room must be matched against the effects when there is no purifier present;
• Replication - the experiment must be capable of peer review, preferably by an independent third party of some authority;
• Replication - the experiment must show the same results at different times where the conditions are identical;
• Replication - different purifiers of the same model must produce very similar or identical test results;

(2) Randomized double blind testing standard - this is the highest standard of medical clinical testing where both the researcher and the test subject do not know whether they are in the actual experiment (where the ionic air purifier is functioning) or the control experiment (where the purifier is not functioning);

(3) A proper testing location - where all known variable factors that can affect the performance of a purifier can be controlled e.g. room size, temperature, humidity, inclusion or exclusion of ambient or outdoor air;

(4) Accurate measurements and recording - the effectiveness of a purifier can vary over time and distance, air flow speeds, consistency of instrumentation etc.;

(5) Proper specialized measuring equipment (images available at The Ionic Air Purifier Blog) is commonly required, such as:

• microbiological air sampler
• ozone tester
• positive & negative ion detector
• decibel meter.

(6) Proper analytical tools and skills - these are required to accurately measure and document the test results before and after the experiment e.g. analyzing mold cultures before and after ionic air purification;

(7) Integrity of the testing staff is critical so that the test results are professionally documented and reliable. Where substantially all of the above procedures have been performed on a purifier by a GLP-certified laboratory, the results of the efficacy and effectiveness tests will form very reliable inputs to an ionic air purifier review. It is the mission of this blog to obtain such test data on as many purifiers as possible, with the goal of producing reliable, objective ionic air purifier reviews for the benefit of all users.