Americans spend nearly 800 billion dollars a year eating out. So, there’s a good chance you or someone you know is having dinner out at a restaurant tonight. As you enter the restaurant of your choice, you’ll see its health inspection score prominently displayed. What you won’t find is its indoor air quality rating. It’s not required, of course. But the Covid pandemic has forced us to consider what’s floating around in the air we breathe, especially in enclosed spaces like restaurants.

Reasons for Restaurants to Consider Investing in Air Purifiers:

1. Cuts Down the Cooking Fumes and Odors Coming from the Kitchen

The kitchen of a restaurant is a busy place. Grills, ovens, and stoves constantly run, cook delicious food, and produce smoke and smell. For that reason, lots of restaurants have to have exceptional HVAC and exhaust systems. But those systems generally don’t get rid of the fumes and odors that come with cooking large amounts of food at one time. Aside from not wanting to smell the same thing the entire time you’re eating, smoke fumes can irritate allergies and cause problems for people with asthma, COPD, lung cancer, and other respiratory issues. Air purifiers equipped with an activated carbon filter help pull most of the fumes and odors out of the air by trapping and absorbing them.

2. Takes Dust Out of the Air

You don’t want a side of dust with your burger. Dust is one of the biggest allergy triggers there is. And it doesn’t matter how much a restaurant cleans and disinfects; they can’t possibly get rid of the dust without help.

Dust quickly accumulates in a restaurant. There is a constant coming and going, along with the doors to the outside opening and shutting. The problem will grow if you don’t regularly clean the air ducts. An air purifier can significantly reduce the amount of dust in the air, helping to cut down the chances of a significant allergy trigger causing problems for the workers and the people eating.

3. Cuts Down the Virus and Bacteria Load in the Air

The Covid pandemic has made us give extra thought to what we are breathing and how close we are to people. Viruses and bacteria can spread through the air. When people cough or sneeze, it can send the small particles flying, infecting others. And it’s even more concerning with Covid because of its airborne nature. An enclosed space like a restaurant where people sit close together and talk over the music and noise around them can make it an excellent place to transfer all kinds of germs from one person to another. The true HEPA filters used in most air purifiers pull the smallest particles out of the air – including viruses, bacteria, and Covid.

4. Takes the Mold Out of the Air

You may not think of mold being a problem inside a restaurant, but kitchens and storage rooms are ideal places for it to grow. Mold flourishes in damp areas, and there are plenty of surfaces that stay damp in a restaurant – think counter spaces, bar areas, and tables. It can also find its way behind freezers and refrigerators, under sinks, and around microwaves. Often, it can become established before you even realize it’s there.

Once mold spores become airborne, they can cause significant respiratory and even skin issues for some people. Air purifiers with genuine HEPA filters pull mold spores out of the air, trap them and send cleaner, mold-free air back out.

5. Helps Cut Down on What’s Tracked In

When you step inside any building, you don’t think about what you’re bringing in with you. Depending on the time of year, pollen may have fallen on your clothes. Maybe it’s raining, and the water has splashed dirt or mud upon you. And then there’s the issue of what you’ve tracked in on the soles of your shoes. If you think about it too long, you can get grossed out. The last thing you want to do is track that inside where you’re about to eat and send it into the air. While you may not keep it off you, air purifiers can take whatever you bring out of the air. As mentioned, genuine HEPA filters pull 99.97 percent of airborne pollutants out of the air, trapping them and not letting them float around anymore.

6. Makes Customers Feel Safer

Restaurants have been hit hard in the age of Covi, given state-wide shutdowns. Even when they reopened, many weren’t allowed to open at total capacity for safety reasons. And just because restaurants are open doesn’t mean customers feel safe going. Loss of business has forced lots of restaurants across the country to close.

In an age where proximity to people and what we are breathing in is so important, it’s wise for restaurants to do all they can and promote what they do to keep customers and employees safe. Adding air purifiers inside the restaurant can help calm those fears. One restaurant owner in Chicago went so far as to offer a personal air purifier with the menu. Anything that can purify the air can make customers feel more relaxed about being inside.

As much as we might like to be outside, we still spend a lot of time indoors. The CDC says Americans spend as much as 90 percent of their time inside. An enclosed space where air may be stale and not as fresh as it needs to be can mean the concentration of certain pollutants can be as much as five times higher than when you’re outside.

Air purifiers pull the harmful particles out of the air and send cleaner air back out. A well-running HVAC system coupled with effective air purifiers can help improve the ventilation and quality of the air inside the restaurant. So, while air purifiers alone won’t completely solve an indoor air quality problem at a restaurant – they will undoubtedly go a long way in making the air you breathe in safer when you’re dining out.