To improve your website experience, we recommend updating your browser to a newer version. Click on one of the links below to download the most recent version. Safari (for Mac users) The Ionic Foot Detox: Fact or Myth?Question: What portable indoor air cleaner should I buy to remove air pollution from inside my home? I want to use the air cleaners to reduce my wife's suffering from multiple chemical sensitivity.Response: If your wife spends most of her time at home in one or two rooms, then placing a suitable portable air cleaner near her in each room should help reduce particle levels - and thus improve your indoor air quality. If she spends time at home in many rooms or your home has an open floor plan, portable air cleaners may not be the best solution. You may want to look at other possible solutions, such as a whole house air cleaning system. [Note that whole house air cleaning systems are not a solution for everyone, as they require a central cooling or heating system.]

You should be aware that air cleaners generally don't remove everything -- most don't remove bad smells or remove all potentially harmful gases from the air — be suspicious of such claims.Portable air cleaners are the most common type of air cleaner. They are small and plug into the wall much like a counter-top kitchen appliance or a portable heater. There are many brands and models of portable air cleaners to chose from. In choosing the best portable air cleaner for you, you should consider the following three factors: Efficiency. Most portable air cleaners use a filter to remove dust and other particles from air that is moved through the filter by a fan. The efficiency of the filter is the fraction of particles removed by the filter. The best performing portable air cleaners have HEPA-grade efficiency, meaning that they remove at least 99.97% of 0.3 micron particles from the air that passes through them.Clean Air Delivery Rate. The performance of portable air cleaners is typically determined by its "Clean Air Delivery Rate" or CADR.

Conceptually, CADR is the amount of clean air delivered each minute by the air cleaner. Change Headlight Bulb Kia SpectraIn practice, CADR can be calculated from the airflow rate of the fan and the filter efficiency. Cat Breeders BangkokFor example, a portable air cleaner with a flow rate of 200 cubic feet per minute (cfm) and a 50% efficient filter would have a CADR of 100 cfm. King Charles Spaniel Puppies For Sale In San FranciscoCADRs can usually be found on the box of the air cleaner. Notably, portable air cleaners without fans, such as many ionic type models, do not have a CADR rating because they do not have a fan to deliver air through the filter. As a result, models without fans are generally ineffective (e.g., are a waste of money) because they don't clean enough air to make a difference in your air quality.

Portable air cleaners work best inside an enclosed space, for example a bedroom with closed doors and windows. The best air cleaner for your home will have a CADR equal to the square footage of the room that you want to clean. An air cleaner with a substantially larger CADR may be too noisy and create too many drafts. On the other hand, an air cleaner with CADR much smaller than the area of your room will not clean the air fast enough for your room size. In this case, you could purchase several portable air cleaners which together have a large enough CADR to clean the same large room. This solution may be sufficient for your needs, although testing has shown this solution to be relatively inefficient.On a more personal note, I would stay away from ionic or electronic air cleaners that produce measureable amounts of ozone, a pollutant that has been shown to be harmful to health. Look for test results from companies making ionic or electronic air cleaners to make sure that the air cleaner does not produce measureable amounts of ozone (say over a couple parts per billion or ppb) in your living space.

Some ionic or electronic air cleaners will include a scrubber to remove the ozone. I would still be wary of these air cleaners, as it is possible that faulty operation, installation, or maintenance will result in the build up of harmful levels of ozone inside your house. Since there are many available air cleaners that don't produce ozone, I don't see a reason to choose a model that may pollute your air.Having said this, please feel free to post any of your environmental health questions to AskTreeHugger [[@]] TreeHugger [[.]] com (please use a descriptive email subject line and mention if you want to remain anonymous or not).Picture shows the Omega Meter model 600SMD The Alpha Metals Omega Meter is microprocessor controlled ionic contamination test system. It is designed to perform cleanliness testing on printed circuit boards and/or other parts. The Alpha Metals Omega Meter is used to determine the quantity of ionic contamination on a specimen under test, typically a printed circuit board (PCB).

The fabrication of printed circuit boards and the subsequent assembly of printed wiring assemblies includes numerous processes whereby corrosive ionic materials are introduced to the board and assembly package. Examples of corrosive ionic elements include Chemical Etchants, Plating Salts, Chemical Metal Cleaners, Solder Fusing Chemicals, Soldering Fluxes, Human Perspiration and Hand Lotion, Chemical Products, and Environmental Fallout. Ionic contamination represents one of the most significant factors causing degradation and failure of electronic assemblies. Very small residual quantities of ionic contamination from numerous and varied sources, alone and/or combined, affect reliability and can cause catastrophic failure of components and circuits. Residual ionic contamination can cause surface electrical leakage and chemical, galvanic and electrolytic corrosion. The key to reducing failures due to ionic contamination is in the cleaning. But how does one determine that a board, component or printed-wiring assembly is, in fact, clean?

That is what the Omega Meter is for. The electrical resistivity of a known volume of an aqueous solution represents the direct measurement of levels of ionic contaminant present in the solution. Quantitative measurements of ionic contamination on parts can be made by measuring the electrical resistivity of a known volume of rinse solution used to extract and remove the ionizable contaminant off the known surface area of a sample being tested. The extract solution must be of an extremely high level of purity. The Omega Meter System is an automated process of the recommended manual test procedure as outlined in section 4.8.3 of MIL-P-28809, "Military Specifications Printed Wiring Assemblies." A wash solution of 75% by volume of ACS reagent grade isopropyl alcohol and 25% by volume of distilled water is measured into the test cell through a set of D.I. columns to achieve a resistivity exceeding 20 megohm centimeter. Other formulations of alcohol and water including D.I. water alone may be used to comply with special test requirements.

A sample (component or assembly) is submerged into the clean test solution and the solution is agitated to promote removal and solubilization of all ionic residues from the test sample. The change in resistivity is continuously monitored and displayed on the LCD display on the console. Knowing the area of the sample in inches, the volume of solution in millimeters and the resistivity in megohms, the system automatically calculates the contamination that has been added to the solution in "micrograms" of equivalent Sodium Chloride per square inch. When the test is completed, the test parameters are printed along with the total contamination extracted from the test sample. Contaminated test solution is regenerated through the D.I. columns to obtain the required purity for reuse in subsequent tests. The closed loop Omega Meter System may be used for many months of testing with minimal addition of fresh solution. Typically the contamination on the PCB would be process residues left over from the fabrication of the circuit board, or left over from the board assembly process.

You want to measure this contamination to be sure that your cleaning steps in making the PCB or assembling the PCB are doing a good job and removing the chemical residues due to these processes. You perform this test by placing the PCB specimen in the "Test Cell" (the large Plexiglass container on the top of the unit). Then the system fills the Test Cell with an isolated volume of IPA/Water test solution (not included). This solution is heated and agitated and removes any contamination on the PCB. The ionic contamination is then determined by monitoring the resistivity of the test solution. The Omega Meter then provides a printout of the results using the embedded printer located on the front panel. This type of equipment is normally used in a manufacturing facility to measure printed circuit boards contamination as part of printed circuit board fabrication and/or assembly operations. This unit is completely refurbished, is fully operational, and in excellent condition.

Following are actual scans of test results conducted on the refurbished unit. Both an Electrical Performance Verification Test and a System / Chemical Performance Test were performed. The system passed both calibration tests. Use these links to view the test results: Electrical Calibration Results (pdf) System / Chemical Calibration Results (pdf) This unit consists of the following items: Front panel of Omega Meter 600smd Product label with part number and serial number Front panel lit up while running a test D.I. Columns mounted in cabinet These videos are mpeg4 format (.mp4). You start the video by selecting the Green Play Arrow. Depending upon your connection speed, it may take a while for these videos to start playing. Video 1 : OmegaMeter 600SMD Cleaning Cycle (part of chemical verification test) During this procedure, the Test Cell is partially filled with the Extract Solution and a Clean Cycle is started. The Extract Solution then cycles thru the test loop going thru the D.I. Columns and pass the resistivity sensor.

The resistivity of the Extract Solution will "increase" as the D.I. Columns remove contaminates from the solution. The solution is deemed "clean" with a resistivity greater than 40Mohm-cm. This Clean Cycle is performed prior to the System / Chemical Verification Test Video 2 : OmegaMeter 600SMD System / Chemical Calibration Verification Test During this procedure, a specific quantity (5000ml) of Extract Solution is filled into the Test Cell. Then the test is started and the OM600 takes an initial resistivity reading. Then a known quantity of contaminate is injected into the test cell (in this case 5ml of 750ppm NaCl). The OM600 then carries out the test, printing data points every 10 seconds for the duration of the 5 minute test. At the end of the test, the OM600 prints out a summary of the test results. With a known initial volume of Extract solution, a measured starting resistivity, a known amount of contaminate injected, and a measured ending resistivity the OM600 can calculate the total contamination and be sure it falls within proper calibration limits.