Asthma
Asthma is a chronic condition that is known as a hypersensitivity disorder (much like other allergies). With asthma, the body is abnormally sensitized to dust and other irritants that can get into the airways. When this happens, the body's immune system reacts very strongly, resulting in inflammation of the airways. This inflammation causes the tissue around the airways to swell, causing the airways to become constricted. As a result, people suffering from an asthma attack have extreme difficulty breathing and may also experience wheezing and a chronic cough. An asthma attack can be brought on by "asthma triggers," which can include stress, exercise and pollutants in the air.
Air Purifiers
Air purifiers work to help filter out particles from the air. They can work in a variety of ways. In some cases, an air purifier will simply work like a microscopic filter or sieve and prevent particles from passing through. Others work via what is called an ion-exchange filter. This ion exchange filter will bind to particles in the air that are electrically charged (either positively or negatively) and prevent them from passing through the filter. Regardless, many high-quality air purifiers are able to eliminate over 99 percent of particles in the air above a certain size, which can vary from filter to filter (though the high-end ones remove particles larger than 3 hundredths of a micron, with a micron being a thousandth of a millimeter).
Air Purifiers and Asthma
Air purifiers are able to help relieve the symptoms of asthma by removing particles from the air that can serve as asthma triggers. Breathing purified air reduces the risk of these particles being inhaled and irritating the airways, which can cause an asthma attack. It should be noted that although an air purifier can reduce the frequency with which asthma attacks occur, they will not prevent attacks caused by other triggers (such as cold air) or from breathing non-purified air. In addition, an air purifier will not treat the cause of the asthma (the hyper-sensitive immune system), although, over time, many people have their asthma symptoms subside.
