Many of us are trying to choose the right portable HEPA(air) filtration unit for our homes or offices.
There is a great resource available for free.
Clean Air Stars. https://cleanairstars.com/
You enter your country, maximum noise limit desired, how many air changes per hour (recommended to be above 10), and room volume or number of persons. A list is then provided sorted by price. In some entries, it is recommended to purchase two or more units and the total price is entered. It is very useful to review noise as some users find the noisier units quite annoying.
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Noted
This website has been developed to help businesses understand how to assess their indoor aerosol transmission risk, find professional guidance where time and resources allow, get advice and testimonials from businesses that have already taken action to protect their customers, and build a directory of businesses like restaurants, bars, cafes, and gyms for customers to find a business with safer air. Businesses should continue following existing advice around reducing transmission by other routes by maintaining good hand hygiene practices and isolating staff when unwell.
There is no such thing as a free lunch. I wonder as to how we determine whether the website is actually reliable? Also as to how it is supported and funded. It is not an Aussie resource.
“ build a directory of businesses like restaurants, bars, cafes, and gyms for customers to find a business with safer air. “
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Hi, from the website home page. "No benefits are received from any businesses, service providers, or device manufacturers mentioned. "
How do they determine which units to list? I note that some ranked highly by Choice do not appear.
They say they are impartial and don’t receive any kickbacks which is fine. What they don’t say is why they are doing this, how the people were chosen to do the work and what their qualifications or objectives are. Who pays the workers and the running costs of the web site?
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So who is meeting the cost of providing the web resource?
The Choice community has examples of some very elaborate false web sites. They are developed around mixing identities of real businesses and selected content to obtain advantage from the unwitting.
It may be a great resource, and have good support.
It may be a Scam. Looking to the website for justification is a common mistake relied upon by fakes. They can be very elaborate in execution.
Perhaps what we are seeing is real.
Please excuse my scepticism at this point in time.
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I initially became aware of Clean Air Stars from a Twitter account by Dr Pieter Peach. @DrPieterPeach and @@CleanAirStars
An earlier format of the Clean Air Stars website stated this
’ Clean Air Stars is maintained by Dr Pieter Peach, an anesthesiologist who sees cleaner indoor air as one of the sustainable, minimally disruptive interventions that can be cost-effectively implemented to reduce the impact of future waves of SARS-CoV-2 to help reduce the need for future restrictions.
He started out his career as a microbiologist/virologist, and after medical school undertook postgraduate training in public health and epidemiology before training in anaesthesiology.’
Dr Peach has been posting highly dependable tweets on scientific understandings of Covid prevention and management.
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Quoting from the same web resource or a twitter account is insufficient proof. It’s how scammers succeed.
That many may believe some or most of what is published on the web resource is a great way of attracting opportunity. Not evidence the source is trustworthy.
Should we remove the link until there is more certainty?
I’m not sure we should point others to a site that cannot be verified?
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Can you suggest how I could verify the site?
I found it very helpful for choosing units for my family at an affordable price. The units listed do not link to any vendors but do give an indicative price. I then looked for vendors independently. The issue of ‘clean air’ is incredibly important for reducing transmission of Covid but also for future airborne infections, filtering smoke and pollens.
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Dr Peach is a registered practitioner in Oz with matching qualifications in anaesthesiology and he does work for a number of the stated organisations. So he is real and checks out but so far I can’t link him to this web site or their activities.
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I am a bit perturbed about the lack of ‘contact’ information on the web site, and a complete lack of authentication or attribution to Dr P Peach.
As @syncretic indicated, Dr P Peach is legit; and he does appear to have a virology background. A quick look at Dr P Peach’s tweets showed lots of tweets from or about legitimate academic and government sources of information, as well as links to Clean Air Stars.
If it is a charade, it is a good one.
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It is a useful resource, and the information provided can be obtained elsewhere if one wants to do considerable research. Whilst the ability to link directly from the site to the vendors is handy, one can do their search independently of the site, i.e. to find the best price. The guidelines for achieving cleaner air in your business are useful as is the link to the current Victorian Government rebate scheme. With growing awareness of the importance of clean air, I hope Choice may undertake similar research and a buying guide. Their current guide is relatively limited and out of date now.
It’s important to qualify the site is promoting advice to businesses. The outcome supposedly to improve the workplace or business premises. It is not intended for residential users to assist them to have a better home environment.
Hence the product promotions and implementation of practices will differ somewhat from those recommended for a residence. the most significant difference is how the spaces in a retail or business outlet/offices are used. The occupation density in most will be much higher than that of a family home. Retail and office environments most often rely on forced rather than natural ventilation. Nearly all Australian free standing homes rely on natural ventilation as well as many older multi unit properties.
The web resource offers to assist businesses. It’s only offer to residential based consumers the identification of businesses in your locality that supposedly - self assessed achieve a level of air quality.
It’s understandable there will be differences between content/advice on the web site referenced and Choice which had a residential consumer priority. There are specialists in residential ventilation who can also offer advice and upgrades to suit those seeking a higher standard at home.
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