Air Purifers: The New Bottled Water

Air Purifers: The New Bottled Water by Faye Spencer

Air Purifiers: The New Bottled Water

Imagine all the garbage in the air that we are forced to breathe in from industrial processes, smog, car pollution, aerosols, etc, then processing all that in our overworked lungs, and breathe back out to the environment again, is there any chance we can find a moment's solace with clean, fresh, and healthy air the way mother nature intended it to be? Not unless you lived on a deserted island.

I don't know about you, but with the rate of pay from my job I don't think I will be purchasing my own island any time soon. But that doesn't mean I don't want to breathe clean air, much like I drink clean bottled spring water at the drop of a dime. If you think about it, those two things are quite common in our everyday lives and are required for functioning and health reasons. Bottled water has pretty much provided us with an alternative way to have clean pure water. Shouldn't air purifiers also be considered a must have in our polluted environment? Not convinced?

Here is a quick run down on 5 categories of pollution that is common in the typical household alone:

1. Odor. This comes from food, animals, body odor, cigarettes, stinky sneakers, clothing, equipment, and others.

2. Particulate. On a nice sunny day, you pull up your shades and are just about ready to take a big whiff of fresh air, but you notice little particles everywhere visible via the suns rays and you stop yourself in your tracks. Those are particulates and to the naked eye one cannot see that it consists of many things including dust, dust mites, dust mite fecal matter, animal dander, skin flakes, pollen, smoke, and allergens.

3. Microbials. These include bacteria, fungi, mycotoxins, midew, viruses, and mold spores.

4. Chemical Fumes. Benzene and formaldehyde are two examples, these fumes are persistently seeping from carpets, upholstery, draperies, furniture, cleaning products, beauty products including nail polish and polish removers. Additionally fumes can be found in cigarette, pipe and cigar smoke, as well as from the building construction of your home or apartment. Many of such chemicals have been identified as carcinogenic (cancer causing).

5. Radon Gas: Second leading cause of lung cancer. Radon is for all intents and purposes invisible to the naked eye, nose, and what have you. Radon is enhanced by smoking.

Now that you have some knowledge of the pollution that is inescapable in our daily lives, it is perhaps time to treat clean air as vitally important as clean water.

Get your own fresh bottled air 24 hours a day with air odor cleaners and home air filter refills

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Low temperature and daylength cues are integrated to regulate FLOWERING LOCUS T in barley

Plant Physiol. (21 March 2008), pp.108.116418.

Interactions between flowering time genes were examined in a doubled haploid barley (Hordeum vulgare) population segregating for VERNALIZATION1 (HvVRN1), VERNALIZATION2 (HvVRN2) and PHOTOPERIOD1 (PPD-H1). A deletion allele of HvVRN2 was associated with rapid inflorescence initiation and early flowering, but only in lines with an active allele of PPD-H1. In these lines, the floral promoter FLOWERING LOCUS T (HvFT1) was expressed at high levels without vernalization, and this preceded induction of HvVRN1. Lines with the deletion allele of HvVRN2 and the inactive ppd-H1 allele did not undergo rapid inflorescence initiation and were late flowering. These data suggest that HvVRN2 counteracts PPD-H1 to prevent flowering prior to vernalization. An allele of HvVRN1 that is expressed at high basal levels (HvVRN1-1) was associated with rapid inflorescence initiation regardless of HvVRN2 or PPD-H1 genotype. HvFT1 was expressed without vernalization in lines with the HvVRN1-1 allele and HvFT1 transcript levels were highest in lines with the active PPD-H1 allele; this correlated with rapid apex development post-inflorescence initiation. Thus, expression of HvVRN1 promotes inflorescence initiation and up-regulates HvFT1. Analysis of HvVRN1 expression in different genetic backgrounds post-vernalization showed that HvVRN2, HvFT1 and PPD-H1 are unlikely to play a role in low-temperature induction of HvVRN1. In a vernalization responsive barley, HvFT1 is not induced by low-temperatures alone, but can be induced by long days following prolonged low-temperature treatment. We conclude that low-temperature and daylength flowering-response pathways are integrated to control expression of HvFT1 in barley, and that this might occur through regulation of HvVRN2 activity. 10.1104/pp.108.116418