Lately my HEPA filters have been giving off an awful smell. I don’t know if my MCAS is becoming worse and I’m more sensitive - or if something changed with their production.
Either way I can barely be in the same room as my purifiers after a filter change.
Has anyone experienced this? I bought them 3 months early so I could take them out of their packaging and let them off gas and yet they still stink.
Experienced, no. Heard of it, yes. Reading reviews for filters for two different brands of purifiers, and also in reviews of furnace filters, all within the last year.
This seems to be a common enough complaint across different equipment and companies that it stands out.
Thankfully have been lucky. The HDX furnace filters that became a new Corsi-Rosenthal box beginning of last month didn't present a problem. Granted they were purchased a year ago, so perhaps they avoided whatever the supply chain issue is.
Despite my reading problem reviews, our smaller air purifier replacement filters also have been without issue, though that has a built in charcoal filter layer, so mayhaps any issue is being masked.
Then again, myself and roommate are both variously limited when it comes to smell, so its possible we simply lack sensitivity to detect the issue.
It seems like the sort of thing that perhaps is worthy of surveying your audience and perhaps drafting up an article drawing attention to how wide spread a problem it might be?
My sense is many folk are suffering what looks like a supply chain quality issue, but, like you, don't know what to do.
Might not be able to solve the immediate issue of your own filters—but you do have a platform.
@beadsland that’s a really good idea and I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before!
I think I gaslight myself a lot where issues of smell are concerned because I am wildly sensitive - the friend who swapped the filters for me doesn’t notice anything at all.
But many in my community are also quite sensitive so this could be worth more exploration!
You would have done, once the replies from others experiencing the same issue started coming in.
One thing myself have learned, though it took me near five decades to do so:
If many people claim to have an experience that many more folk, myself included, have never experienced, the folk who have the experience are the experts.
@broadwaybabyto @beadsland speculating further from a place of Mild scientific literacy: the install buddy not smelling it could narrow down the list of culprit chemicals if you had a Chemistry Detective Internet Friend.
If it’s not just a sensitivity threshold only one of you crosses, but-instead/and-also is a genetic thing like cilantro tasting herbal versus soapy, or grain alcohol tasting as sweetness versus piquancy.
To a chemist, this would narrow down whatever they did to their meltblown polypropylene, and there might be a solution to the offgassing that you can do at home without needing to synthesize antistankonium fulminate from scratch. I’d hope for heating, freezing, a misted household chemical, something like that, but I’m not the Science Side of Tumblr unfortunately. I bet a poster with your reach can find the correct expert on this without much trouble.
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