As a dental lab owner, you know the air inside the lab is often hazy, what with all the grinding and polishing and chipping and chiseling. But you may not know indoor air—any indoor air—is already two to five times more polluted than outdoor air. That makes air inside dental labs even more problematic.

Unfortunately, some dental lab owners think the solution to bad air lies in focusing on the building’s HVAC system. That won’t solve the problem of poor air quality. Here’s why:

HVAC systems recirculate air, but they don’t do a thing about cleaning the air. HVAC filters can trap very large particles, but things like volatile organic compounds (VOCs), germs, bacteria and allergens pass right through typical HVAC filters. That doesn’t alleviate the problem of poor air quality inside buildings.

Dental lab owners may think installing better filters in existing HVAC systems will eliminate the problem. It won’t. That’s because premium filters designed specifically for HVAC systems are bulky, and while they do a better job of trapping bad air in the direct area near the intake, these thick filters drag down HVAC efficiency, significantly reducing airflow. So, HVAC will work harder, break down more often and still not solve the poor air quality problem. Additionally, these modifications to existing HVAC systems do nothing for areas that aren’t near the intakes.

That’s also true of the intakes around grinding equipment—they will suck in dust in the immediate vicinity of a work station, but don’t help with the dust that escapes the intake and floats in the air.

Perhaps most importantly, HVAC systems spread dust and other contaminants farther and faster through recirculation. In essence, HVAC systems are air movers, not air improvers. There just isn’t enough efficiency in HVAC systems, because they are designed first and foremost to push air throughout buildings. Also, HVAC systems focus on the entirety of buildings, pushing air at the same rate throughout. That means indoor air quality problem areas will be ignored.

Instead of recirculating poor air, lab owners need to focus on removing it. In our opinion, the best way to do that is by installing AeraMax Professional air purifiers. These commercial-grade systems use hospital-type True HEPA filtration to effectively, quickly and efficiently remove 99.97 percent of airborne contaminants, like germs, bacteria, smoke, odours, allergens and VOCs, from indoor air. The four-stage filtration systems work automatically, because the units sense when poor air is present, adjusting to remove the bad air.

And, AeraMax Professional offers an array of different units to accommodate a variety of lab room sizes, meaning you can let your HVAC focus on what it’s meant to be doing. It’s a proven solution for dental labs—a solution dental lab owners need to consider.