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Here's some third party information on the Trane Clean Effects filters.
How does TRANE CleanEffects stack up against other air cleaners? TRANE CleanEffects utilizes patented breakthrough air cleaning technology to remove up to an astounding 99.98% of airborne allergens from the air that passes through the filter, making it 8 times more effective than even the best HEPA filters and 100 times more effective than a standard 1" filter or ionic-type room appliance. What's more, TRANE CleanEffects has been performance- tested by LMS Technologies and Environmental Health & Engineering, Inc, with the results verified by professors from the Harvard School of Public Health.
LMS Technologies is a technology consulting company that specializes in air flow measurement, filtration testing and particle analysis. Environmental Health & Engineering is an environmental consulting and engineering services company that is dedicated to ensuring safe and productive environments, and is co-founded by Dr. John D. Spengler, PhD of the Department of Environmental Health at Harvard. ALL STUFFED UP: In the winter, we seal up the windows, change the filter on our heating system and heave a sigh of relief. We've locked dirt and allergens out of the house, right? Uh, wrong, counters Dr. David MacIntosh, a principal scientist with Environmental Health and Engineering Inc. and adjunct/lecture professor, respectively, at "When you tighten up the house in the winter, there's less dilution of the pollutants generated within the home," he said. "Plus, people spend 15 percent more waking hours indoors than during the rest of the year. So this actually increases your exposure to pollutants like mold and bacteria." WHAT'S A PERSON TO DO? The home heating/air conditioning equipment maker Trane recently hired Environmental Health and Engineering to test a variety of products that promise a healthier home environment. Trane has a new, whole-house air filtration system, CleanEffects, and the company was hoping this product would beat the competition. MacIntosh says it did so by a mile. "We created a 1,350-square-foot test home into which we released a variety of airborne contaminants common to American households," MacIntosh said, "including fine road dust, particles from cooking and tobacco smoke... pollen, mold spores and pet dander." The homeowner's typical first line of defense, that one-inch disposable filter dutifully changed every six months in your forced air heating/cooling system, eliminated almost none of the particles fine enough (0.5 microns) to get into the small sacs of the lungs and enter the blood stream, EH&E found. Truth is, those filters are only designed to protect the system from dust-bunny accumulation. Also scoring a zero removal rating, as Consumer Reports has also discovered, were those highly hyped "silent" ionic air cleaners. Just running the ventilating fan on your heating system gives more benefit. A four- or five-inch pleated filter installed in your central heating/air conditioning system delivers a 15 percent reduction in small particle pollutants, EH&E found. The next step up in efficacy are portable air cleaners equipped with refined HEPA filters, but you've gotta spread several around the house for decent coverage. Better still is a whole-house electronic air cleaner connected to a central system. It attacks airborne pollutants with a grid of particle-zapping wires. But the Trane CleanEffects system does the best job at removing nasty stuff, by creating an electronic field through which all recirculated air must pass, EH&E found. "We measured a 90 percent reduction of the .5 micron particles. And if you eliminate all duct leaks, you can achieve a 99 percent clean rate." |
