You love your pets and would do anything to keep them happy and healthy. But what happens when your furry family member starts to make you a cough and sneeze? Re-homing pets due to allergies is now a thing of the past thanks to a few helpful ways to remove these irritants from your home.
Do Air Purifiers Work for Pets?
Just like humans, your pets shed their hair and dander all throughout the space they inhabit the most, your home. When we walk across the floors, we stir up these irritants into the air we breathe, causing unpleasant allergic reactions such as itchy eyes and sneezing. Running an air purifier with a HEPA filter designed specifically for pets can remove up to 99% of airborne pet dander, odors, and dried saliva from the air you and your family breathe.
What Types of Allergies Can An AIr Purifier Help With?
- Cat Allergies:Have you ever seen a friend or family member that is highly allergic to cats visit the home of a cat owner? Or maybe you are the one that experiences this torment! When this person walks into a home of a cat owner they immediately start feeling a slight tingling. As this tingling progresses, their eyes begin to itch and water, their nose starts to get congested. Suddenly, they know what they’ve suspected to be true: there’s a cat in this home. Even if they cannot see it, they can feel it. The allergens in the air are giving them a full-blown allergic reaction.People often assume that dander and fur are the culprits, but what most are not aware of is that it’s a cat’s saliva that contains all of the allergens! When a cat cleans itself by licking, saliva is deposited all over their fur. When the saliva has dried, these allergens can be released into the air, onto your floors, and even your furniture. An excellent way to clear these irritants from the air you breathe is to continuously run an air purifier with a HEPA filter in the home. Air purifiers can remove all of these allergens from the air to the point where a cat allergy sufferer won’t feel any irritation when in the home with a cat.
While an air purifier can clean the air of allergens, cannot suck them up off of furniture or your bed if that’s where your cat has been sleeping. Therefore, if someone living in the home with the cat suffers from cat allergies, it is recommended to keep them out of the bedroom, and clean/vacuum furniture regularly where they sleep.
- Dog Allergies:Allergies to dogs can be as problematic as allergies to cats, although we tend to see allergies to dogs a little less frequently than cat allergies. However, any person with allergic sensitivities or asthma of any kind can benefit from an air purifier if dogs are present in their home or living environment. Just like cats, dogs lick themselves and their saliva dries on their fur. The dry saliva can contain allergies and become airborne and cause an allergic reaction for those that come in contact with it.Hypoallergenic Dogs
Although there are many breeds of dogs that shed less, making it easier to keep your environment clean, there are no truly hypoallergenic dogs that are guaranteed to prevent you from having an allergic reaction.
In addition, regardless of your breed of dog, most dogs go outdoors regularly to go to the bathroom. As they go outside, they can pick up all sorts of dirt and allergens that they then bring back into the home. This means that someone’s dog allergies might be even more aggravated by an allergic sensitivity to all of the things that a dog comes in contact with, rather than the dog itself.
Room air purifiers in the key living areas will help clean up the airborne pollutants from living with man’s best friend. If your allergies are particularly troublesome, consider making your bedroom a dog-free zone. If that is not possible, use a home air purifier in the bedroom 24 hours a day; it is particularly helpful if you run it on the highest setting an hour before bedtime. Having an air purifier with a HEPA odor filter in your house could also remove any odors from the air if your dog gets dirty or brings in smells from the outdoors.
- Bird Dust:When it comes to allergies and pet dander, birds may be some of the worst offenders. However, most people don’t tend to know this unless they or a friend own one. Bird feathers are interlocking, and each time a bird moves, the tiny barbs that hold its feathers together rub against each other to produce a super fine dust. The bigger the bird, the more dust for your air purifiers to combat. Extremely large birds such as African Gray Parrots can produce an enormous volume of dust that can quickly spread throughout the home.Running an air purifier in the same room that the bird is housed in will help immensely reduce the fine dust and dander floating around the air in your home. For bird odors, also try an air purifier that incorporates an activated carbon filter to remove odors and freshen the air, in addition to a HEPA layer which is required to remove fine particles.
- Other furry friends:Guinea pigs, gerbils, and hamsters groom themselves, leaving saliva on their fur where it dries and flakes off. Pets in small cages come into frequent contact with their own urine which dries, becomes airborne, and can contain more irritating allergens than the saliva. Unsuspecting humans then pick up the cute little critters, not realizing that the allergens become airborne in their homes. Forgetting to wash their hands, they then transfer the dried saliva to their eyes, noses, mouths, and skin. The dried urine or saliva on humans can result in sneezing and itchy eyes and skin.In addition, any pet that lives in a cage tends to have bedding material that gets changed regularly. Whether this bedding is wood chips, cardboard, or paper-based, it always produces a lot of fine dust and particles that get kicked up into the air. This fine dust also gets stirred up every time your pet moves or burrows into it.
In wire cages, these bedding particles will escape and float around the home. When they float by a human nose and are inhaled, irritation can result. An air purifier near the cage will help remove all types of airborne dust and allergens from the air the keep your home fresh and clean. Also, if your pet’s cage smells from time to time, an air purifier with odor removal capabilities can keep the odor in check between bedding changes.
What Makes a Good Pet Air Purifier?
When buying an air purifier for dealing with pet allergies, it is important to get one with a HEPA filter that specifically removes pet dander, dust, and other allergens from your air. To remove odors, consider choosing an air purifier with an activated carbon filter or an odor removal additive.
Some air purifier companies also offer the option of special odor neutralizers that eliminate strong odors from your home, not just absorb them. Be sure to check your air purifier filter and prefilter frequently as they collect dust and dander to prolong the life of your HEPA filter.
Additional steps you can take to limit pet allergens in your home:
Running an air purifier 24 hours a day in the rooms your pets frequent the most can cut back on pet allergens tremendously. If you’re still suffering from pet allergies, there are a few other ways we recommend to help alleviate your symptoms.
If your pet sleeps with you or in the same room as you, be sure to frequently wash all bedding to ensure you and your loved ones are not breathing in pet allergens while you sleep. Changing litter boxes and bathing your pet on the regular are also excellent ways to help you cope with your furry friends at home.
Pets enrich our lives and are members of the family. That doesn’t mean that you have to live with allergies and irritation brought on by their dander, fur, and dust. HEPA room air purifiers running 24/7 in key living areas of the home, particularly where the pet lounges and the bedroom will remove a significant amount of the floating particulate. For allergenics, clean air is the key to living happily with pets, and the key to clean air is a home air purifier.
