Why I started IndoorAirLab

I'm Will.

My family lived in the same house in Colorado for more than 30 years. Then a wildfire took it.

You'd think that would be the end of the fire part of the story. It wasn't. Just about every summer since, the smoke has come back: sometimes from fires in the Rockies, sometimes from Canada, sometimes from places hundreds of miles away that I've never seen.

I also have asthma. So smoke season isn't an abstract air-quality number on an app for me. It's something I feel. I wanted to protect my own lungs and my family's, so I started trying to figure out what actually works.

That turned out to be harder than it should be. Every purifier box says it cleans a huge room. Every "best of" list picks something different. And a lot of what reads like advice online is really just marketing. I kept wishing someone would show me the evidence and let me decide for myself.

So I started doing that for myself: reading the studies, the public health guidance, and the certified lab data, and writing it down in plain English. IndoorAirLab is that notebook, cleaned up so it's useful to you too.

What I learned digging in

• Staying inside with the windows shut isn't enough on its own. In a study of Seattle homes during the 2020 fires, smoke still got in, and portable HEPA purifiers made a real difference. (See the research.)
• The room size printed on a box isn't the number that matters. The certified smoke CADR is. (How to size a purifier.)
• A lot of claims, especially about removing smoke gases and odors, have far less evidence behind them than the marketing suggests. (HEPA vs. carbon.)

What IndoorAirLab is for

I want to give you a clear lens on air purifiers, filters, and indoor air, so you can make your own decisions and spend your money well. In practice, that means:

• Plain-language guides built on published research and official guidance, with every source linked.
• An honest rating of how strong the evidence is for each main claim, including when it's weak.
• Certified ratings and manufacturer claims kept clearly separate.
• No paid rankings, ever.

What's next

I'm setting up my own testing in an ordinary room in an ordinary house, because that's where most of us actually live. I'll publish the method and the raw numbers along with the results, so you can check my work.

I'm not a doctor, and nothing here is medical advice. If you have asthma or another lung or heart condition, talk with your doctor about a plan for smoke days.

Questions, corrections, or your own smoke-season story? Email me at [email protected].