Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Reader, embark on this crusade at your own peril, or you will assuredly end up like me: a slave to your VOC monitor. It began with a strange smell in my apartment. It ended with hundreds of dollars of air purification products, frigid howling winds coming in through all our windows at all hours of the day and night, and a few hundred more in lab air tests from PRISM. Does the device function? Somewhat, but probably not very well and certainly not consistently. For example, I put it in front of the vent of my expensive activated carbon-zeolite-potassium-iodide hospital-grade air purifier today: the VOCs went down to 0 then shot up to 3.999 ml/m3 in two seconds. The logic will tie your brain in knots: you'll put the machine in a room, then open all the windows and wait to find that the machine shows an increase of formaldehyde and VOCs despite the air being markedly cleaner. We did have problems with the air: my chest and eyes are easily irritated by smells and chemicals. The lab-analyzed home air test we did came back with some elevated levels, particularly of formaldehyde, which is probably from all the new flooring, walls, and furniture in this house. It will not help you to have this madly beeping device scream at you that your VOCs and formaldehyde levels exceed the recommended levels, and yes it does beep, and no there's no way to shut it up except, in a moment of weakness to throw the thing out the window, which is by the way, the only place it will feel truly content. You may not be able to live outside, but your little VOC monitor will settle for nothing less. I'm sure that this thing gets it generally right: it seems to go green and happy outside, and higher indoors. But don't take this as proof that it knows what's going on in terms of dangerous chemicals. Probably it's sensing CO2 rather than the more disconcerting chemicals like benzene. As for formaldehyde, I have my doubts that this is an accurate sensor for that. Just try breathing on it and you'll see: apparently your lungs are full of VOCs, including formaldehyde. That is, anyway, how the manufacturer explains those anomalous readings. You will be looking for the source of all your woes and you'll find that it was inside you all along. Friend, learn from my mistakes: don't lose many, many hours fretting that your air purifier isn't working. If there is a bad smell, or some chemical odors in your home, open the window. No air purifier can come close to the air quality outside. Worried about smoke? The best monitor available is already in your possession: your nose. No sense of smell? Get a monitor that doesn't beep. Honestly if it wasn't for that ear-piercing, uncontrollable beep, I wouldn't even be writing this. Its arbitrariness, its alarmism, and even its remarkably badly written instructions (good luck interpreting those), give me the sense that this is no monitor at all, just a psychological torture device. The world is full of dangerous invisible compounds. Acrylamide in coffee, toast, and anything browned; meat of all kinds, PCBs in fish, fat derived from animals, benzene, formaldehyde, plastics, toothpaste, deodorant, refrigeration, alcohol. The list is, increasingly, endless. If you are anything like me, you are at your wits end trying to responsibly avoid these toxins. The last thing you need is an inconsistent device from Hell haunting your every waking minute with the possibility that maybe it's smelling something truly carcinogenic in your bedroom.