Do Air Purifiers Get Rid of Musty Smells? Busting The Myths about Nasty Indoor Smells
Will an air purifier help with the musty smell in your home or office?
Keep reading!
Next to a humidifier and a dehumidifier, you should invest in an air purifier for your home. This is especially important if you live in an area that has contaminated air.
Some of the most common contaminants include dust, industrial or other smoke, mold, pollen, and others.
So, do air purifiers get rid of musty smells? If the air purifier has an activated carbon filter, a cartridge filter, and a HEPA filter, it can remove up to 99 percent of air pollutants, which also include musty odors. The musty smell that comes from mold can make your bathroom inhabitable. A good air purifier can remove such an odor.
To remove odor from the air, it takes a one-off investment in an air purifier. That way, you can enjoy your abode after work.
Many times, we mostly run a dehumidifier in summer to get rid of excess moisture, as well as a humidifier in the winter to raise indoor humidity.
Is the musty smell dangerous?
If you are experiencing a musty smell in your home, you have a reason to get worried, especially if you have someone suffering from respiratory illnesses.
The reason for this is that the musty smell shows the presence of a mold infestation in your home. Therefore, even before you use an air purifier to get rid of the musty smell, you need to check all the dark corners of your home.
You could start with the closets, spaces under the kitchen counter, under the beds, on the ceilings, and so on.
Also, do not forget that the basement provides a good space for mold growth since it is dark and has higher humidity than the rest of the house.
Therefore, crank the dehumidifier for the basement from time to time to lower the humidity level in the basement.
Main causes of musty smell at home
- Mold and mildew infestation in basement, bathrooms, kitchens, and other hidden spaces
- Dead rodents
- Dust collection
- Enclosed air that is trapped in a room
- Rotting or rotten food material
- Burning food in the kitchen
- Damp clothes
If there is a musty smell at home, there is mold or mildew. Of course, this is the reason why people ask how to get rid of the stale smell in clothes or how to get rid of the musty smell in the house.
Most of the time, a musty smell develops when you have mold. In addition, when you have been running the humidifier too much, it can lead to the development of mold.
Mold grows in dark and moist spaces such as the bathroom and closets.
Therefore, since every home must have a few dark spaces, it is important to invest in an air purifier for a musty smell.
In addition to using an air purifier to get rid of the musty smells, this appliance is also going to capture mold spores.
These are sinister indoor allergens that can cause asthmatic attacks. Mold spores also trigger allergies. In addition, when mold infests your closet, it can damage your clothes.
Another thing that air purifiers help with is humidifier white dust.
If you have an ultrasonic humidifier, you might have noticed a film of pale dust forming on your furniture, walls, indoor plants, and floors. This is called white dust, and it comes from cool mist ultrasonic humidifiers.
While this pale dust from humidifiers is not harmful to your health, the idea of inhaling it into your lungs is not so good.
Do air purifiers work for mold?
Yes, they do! The musty smell that comes from mold and mildew is one of the main reasons for buying an air purifier for the basement with HEPA filter mold.
As we said, mold is the main cause of the nasty odor in the house. If you have been asking whether air purifiers work for mold, the answer is yes; they help with that too.
As explained above, air purifiers come with true HEPA filters, carbon-activated filters, and cartridge filter. With such a 3D attack on indoor air contaminants, you can be sure that no mold spore is going to escape this trap.
Once you know the areas of your home that are most susceptible to mold, you can place your air purifier there.
Basements allow mold to grow because of the moist and dark conditions. If you have a basement, you should invest in an air purifier for the basement.
If you have noticed black patches on your ceiling or walls, you do need a purifier with an air filter for mold.
Luckily, on the market, you will find many air purifiers that kill mold. Therefore, you can control this problem and eliminate the musty smell from your home.
Air purifier for kitchen odors: Does it help?
The smell of burned food can linger in your kitchen air for days on end. Therefore, you could be wondering whether you can use an air purifier to remove odors from the kitchen.
The good thing is that they do. However, because of the concentrated nature of the kitchen odors, especially if it is burned food, you need to crank the air purifier as soon as possible.
In addition, open the kitchen windows and doors as soon as you smell burned food. That way, fresh air can get inside and dissipate most of the odor.
Just check to make sure that the air purifier that you buy has a true HEPA filter. That is one way you can capture all the kitchen grease odor.
Do air purifiers remove cooking odors? Yes, they also do that. They also remove smoke from the kitchen. Therefore, they can cleanse the air that you inhale completely to make it as friendly as possible.
If you like experimenting with new recipes, you need the best air purifier for cooking odors.
If you leave some kitchen odors to linger so long, they might even affect the authenticity of your ingredients, especially spices.
How to remove the musty smell from stored items
Because they stay in the dark, stored leather items might also develop a musty smell. Therefore, if you have turned your garage or attic into your storeroom for things that you don’t need at the moment, you need to check the items from time to time.
If you notice a musty smell, it means there is a mold infestation. You need to get rid of it! Apart from running an air purifier for smells, you can try out a few other things. These are:
- Place a small bowl of baking soda in the center of the room with a musty smell. It will absorb all the smell
- Use a fan to whip the air around
- Open the doors and windows to let in fresh air and let out stale air
- Find the cause of the musty smell and remove it. It could be pieces of rotting food, a dead rodent, mold, or mildew
- Use a vacuum cleaner to remove dust because it can also cause a musty smell
- Use air-recommended freshener and essential oils
Does the Dyson air purifier remove odors?
If the Dyson air purifier you want to buy comes with Dyson Pure Cool Technology, it is going to remove odors from your indoor air.
Integrated with this advanced technology, it has an activated charcoal filter. A regular HEPA filter, even a three-stage one, is not going to remove odor from your air. It is only going to remove particles and allergens up to 0.3 microns in size.
With this information in mind, the question you should always ask is: Does this air purifier have an activated carbon filter?
If it says it has one in the product description, go for it. It is going to remove odors and cigarette smoke from your indoor air.
Do all air purifiers remove odors?
All air purifiers do not remove odors. Only a few of them do, and luckily, Dyson has one. The Dyson Pure Cool Air Purifier is a marvel of air-cleaning technology.
It comes with glass HEPA filters to remove indoor allergens such as mold spores, bacteria, pet dander, pet fur, and others.
If left unattended, such air pollutants can cause shortness of breath, asthma attacks, and other types of illnesses.
In addition to HEPA filters, the Dyson Air Purifier comes with another filter that’s positioned behind the HEPA filters.
This filter is filled with Tris-impregnated carbon granules. They absorb and neutralize formaldehyde, other VOCs, and smells.
Here, we cannot even delve into the advanced air purification technology that Dyson has employed in this air purifier.
It can remove industrial gases, and the airflow rate is so high, at 77 gallons per second! Check out more information about this air purifier from Dyson.
Will an air purifier help with the old house smell?
When you enter an old house, an odd smell—a stuffiness of sorts—hits you bang in the face. This heavy, damp smell feels overwhelming, and every time you open the door, you feel aggrieved.
This old house smell is a combination of many things. They include humidity, mold, volatile organic compounds, and others. In another post, we said that stale smell is a sign of mold toxicity in the home.
Thankfully, there are air purifiers that can remove this kind of smell. A regular HEPA filter air purifier will not remove the musty smell.
Opening the windows will help. However, remember that outside humidity affects inside humidity. Dry, cold air can also creep in from the outside and make your house super uncomfortable.
This is why a more modern approach is welcome—you know, the use of an advanced air purifier to remove the musty odor.
To do this, get an air purifier with a high air changes per hour rate. You need the air in your house exchanged as many times as possible.
To the question of whether an air purifier will help with the old house smell, it will if it has an activated charcoal/carbon filter. A regular HEPA filter only removes particles, not smells or smoke.
Do air purifiers help with animal smells?
Pet smells are everywhere if you keep pets. From dogs to cats, some people even keep ball pythons. The fish tank can also produce some not-so-good smells.
Thankfully, an air purifier with an activated charcoal filter can easily remove these smells from the indoor air.
An air purifier with HEPA filters alone is not going to remove any type of odor from your home. However, it can remove allergens such as fur, pet dander, and bacteria.
Look for a unit with both HEPA and activated charcoal filters. It can be the physical pollutants, the smells, and the smoke.
A good choice would be the Dyson Pure Cool Air Purifier, which you can buy on Amazon.com. It is a three-in-one type of unit, with a fan for cooling in summer, a heater for winter, and an air cleaner for all times.
Do air purifiers help with cooking odors?
Without using technology to remove burned food odor from the kitchen, it can linger for weeks. Using baking soda and other natural ways of removing smells will work too, but it can take a few to several days.
That’s why we have the best air purifiers that help with cooking odors. They use activated carbon technology to remove the nasty smell from your kitchen.
Does the Dyson air purifier remove cooking odors?
Yes, and it does much more than that. If you get the three-in-one unit, it is going to get rid of smells in 30 to 60 minutes.
Do not get the air purifier running before you are done cooking. Cook as much as you like! Let the steam billow out.
It helps to keep the exhaust fan running if you have one since it can remove the humid air and exchange it with drier air from outside.
When the steam settles down, you can run the air purifier. It is going to remove the cooking odor quickly. If you have a Dyson air purifier, it can remove the odor quickly.
Some of their models also come integrated with heaters and cooling fans. Thus, it can help to lower the temperature of the room.
Also read my past articles on:
Where to place the air purifier for the best effect
Conclusion
There is so much more that you need to know about the question of whether an air purifier will help with a musty smell.
There are other methods of removing musty air, too. They include letting in fresh air, using a fan, baking soda, indoor plants, and using vinegar.
However, the most important thing is to get rid of the root cause of the problem. Check out for mold; it is notorious for causing damage, sickness, and a musty smell indoors.
