Letter From the Editor

Chances are that if you’re reading this you either suffer from asthma and want to make it better, you’re new to asthma and just starting to figure it all out, or you have a loved one who is struggling and you want to help. All good reasons to be here, read on!

What I’ve found as an adult with asthma is that most of my efforts are centered around management. It’s not often that I have an unexpected flare up because I already know what can trigger asthma and I avoid those situations as best as I can. I can feel my lungs when they’re inflamed and I know the early signs of a flare up. Researchers increasingly describe asthma this same way: not simply as an occasional respiratory event, but as a chronic inflammatory condition that is strongly influenced by environmental exposure to airborne particles, allergens, and pollutants.

Management is key because if it’s not managed well, that’s when things can go off the rails. For example, I’m one of those people who just can’t get a cold and get over it in a few days. My colds last for weeks and sometimes months. I was once sick for so long and coughed so hard that I broke a rib. I was recently sick with a minor cold, but mine dragged on for four weeks and I lost my voice completely. It just kept going and going, like the Energizer Bunny of colds. Getting even a minor cold can be brutal.

I asked my pulmonologist why my colds are always so long and he said “yeah, that’s asthma.” This constant, low-grade inflammation is always ready to explode into full-on bronchitis. So I have to be very vigilant. And the science backs this up. Studies have shown that people with asthma often have heightened airway inflammation even when symptoms seem mild, which makes them more vulnerable to respiratory infections and environmental triggers such as particulate pollution and indoor allergens.

My response to him: “bummer.”

But that’s often how it goes with adult asthma. There’s no magic fix. The solutions are fairly limited: medicine, healthy lifestyle, and avoiding triggers. You’re starting to get the picture, or maybe you can see yourself in these stories.

The key here is that with adult asthma there’s not really a big ‘headline-grabbing’ event. It can happen, but seldom. Adult asthma is more of an omnipresent consideration in everything you do; it’s always there, waiting to grab a headline, and your job as an adult is to prevent it from doing so. This aligns with what public-health researchers have been emphasizing in recent years. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency notes that Americans spend roughly 90% of their time indoors, where pollutant concentrations can sometimes be higher than outdoors. Indoor pollutants—including fine particulate matter (PM2.5), allergens, VOCs, and smoke—are now recognized as major contributors to respiratory symptoms and asthma exacerbations.

This is where air purifiers enter the picture. It’s been over five years now that I’ve been testing, researching, and writing about air purifiers and air quality. And in that time I’ve accumulated a lot of air purifiers! And I can confidently say that air purifiers really help me manage my asthma. But not in a way you might typically expect.

Let me explain…say for example I do an adult thing like go to a bar with friends. Very adult, very normal. But in this bar people are smoking. I can feel it in my lungs; they start to itch and burn. And my voice starts to struggle a bit. It’s unavoidable. The damage has been done—my omnipresent lung inflammation has been taunted and it’s eager to swell up and show off. Smoke exposure is a particularly well-known asthma trigger, and research consistently shows that even short exposures to airborne particles can irritate already inflamed airways.

But because I have an air purifier at home all is not lost, and I’m definitely not doomed to weeks of struggle. I know that when I go home my air purifier keeps my home’s air quality super clean and free of allergens, dust, and other microscopic things I cannot see. If I didn’t have this air purifier, I’d go home and my inflammation would continue to mix with air full of particles, and this could mean that my asthma is front and center for the next week. Multiple recent studies on indoor air filtration have shown that high-efficiency HEPA filtration can significantly reduce indoor particulate pollution, including PM2.5 and allergens, both of which are known asthma triggers.

With an air purifier at home, the air is clean and there’s nothing to taunt my asthma. So yes, I may still struggle a bit for a day or two, but with careful attention to good practices and my medicine, then I’m fine.

Are air purifiers a magic bullet for adult asthma? No.

Do air purifiers work? Yes…but much like adult asthma—there’s no real ‘headline-grabbing’ moment.

An air purifier is a really powerful tool to help manage asthma, in conjunction with medicine and healthy practices. They work consistently and reliably to help reduce the triggers of flare ups so that you can avoid a bigger incident. And as someone who suffers from asthma and its effects…I’ll happily take as much help as I can get.