Blew $400 on a fancy air purifier and my allergies got worse

I bought one of those fancy Dyson air purifiers last winter for my apartment in Seattle (you know, the ones that look like a sci-fi fan). I figured spending $400 would finally fix my dust allergy, I was sneezing like crazy every morning. But after running it on high for a week straight, my symptoms actually got worse. Turns out the filter was too fine and it was just recirculating stale air without pulling in fresh oxygen from any cracked windows. I had to crack a window every few hours just to breathe normally, which kind of defeats the point of an air purifier. My buddy swears by a cheaper $100 Honeywell model that just works. Anyone else drop big cash on a gadget that backfired on them?

2 comments

2 Comments

abbychen4d ago

Wait did you check the filter when you first got it? I bought a cheap purifier once and the thing came with the plastic wrap still on the filter, took me two weeks to figure out why the air smelled like a chemistry set. Also makes me wonder what kind of filter rating you got, like did you go way overboard with a HEPA that's too tight for your specific dust?

viola_butler4d ago

Right, because nothing says "fresh air" like a plastic-wrapped science experiment running in your living room for two weeks. @abbychen, you're probably right about the HEPA thing too - I went with one of those "medical grade" ones that's basically a vacuum for electrons, and now the poor thing is probably suffocating trying to pull air through it. My dust isn't even that fancy, just regular boring house dust, not like it needs a NASA-grade filter to catch cat hair. Did you end up swapping yours for a lower rating or did you just let it run and pray the plastic smell burned off?