Our one-year-old is always sick. I’ve heard kids are always sick but now that we have one, this reality is a little daunting. He goes to daycare full-time and, once he started there, the colds and coughs (and worse) began. What’s been a particular issue for our baby boy is that, when he gets sick, he tends to wheeze, and so he’s been using a baby inhaler every day since November. Because of this issue, his pediatrician said he’s likely a candidate for asthma when he’s older. Which got us thinking, maybe our house is a candidate for an air purifier?

We have a dog and, before the baby was born, we decided to start using a cleaning crew to help us keep the house cleaner than it normally is to make sure the baby wouldn’t have any health issues coming home to a place where dog hair and dust are inevitable. We regularly vacuum and dust because of said dog, and have been even better about it since bringing home baby. Our regular clean-ups are in addition to having the cleaning crew come once a month. But we started thinking that maybe that’s not enough, so we looked into purchasing an air purifier.

According to Consumer Reports, they may or may not be worth it, which isn’t exactly the most helpful information! You can read more about it here, but this is what Consumer Reports says: There are limits to what an air purifier can do. An air purifier can only remove allergens while they’re floating in the air (dust and pollen, for example). Larger, heavier allergens, such as mites, mold, and pollen, settle to the ground so quickly that the air purifier can’t capture them all in time. The health benefits from using air purifiers vary from person to person and depend on the types of pollutants in your home.

And “worth it” means more than just the results. Air purifiers are expensive. The best rated ones start at $200 and they each come with multiple filters that need to be changed several times a year, with each filter costing between $20-$200 each. That adds up.

So we thought about it and decided that an air purifier certainly couldn’t hurt, right? I mean, hurt our pockets, but maybe, if there were positive health results, we would save money on health-related issues in the long-run…right?

We ended up getting the Honeywell HPA300 based on these reviews. We placed it in his room since that is where he spends the most time when he’s home. But is the air purifier working? We don’t know! Is the air purifier worth it? We have know idea!

According to this article, there is very little medical evidence to support that air purifiers directly help improve your health or alleviate allergies and respiratory symptoms. That’s due in part to the fact that it is very difficult to separate the effects of known air-quality pollutants in your home from other environmental and genetic factors. (For instance, how are the furnishings and ventilation in your home affecting you in addition to any indoor pollutants?) But if you are an allergy or asthma sufferer, an air purifier with a HEPA filter may be helpful for you as it will be good at removing fine airborne particles. The Honeywell air purifier that we purchased does have a HEPA filter, so we hope this will help the little dude breathe better and cleaner air.

Do you have an air purifier? Do you think they’re worth it? If you are in the market, here and here are two stories explaining the best ways to use your air purifier. Top tips include leaving it on all the time, keeping it in the same room all the time, keeping windows in that room closed all the time, and changing the filters regularly and on schedule.

Fingers crossed that our air purifier investment was worth it!