Why We Sometimes Need to Remove Tiny Particles From the Air

When you breathe air in you normally don't consider much about it. This is a completely natural process that we carry out without needing to consciously decide to, and it's one that you can't see thanks to the completely invisible nature of oxygen. Of course we notice pretty quickly if we run out of air, but for the most part we aren't aware of the action.

You may not have given much thought then to the fact that you don't just breathe in air with every inhalation. Actually you also breath in a lot of other things and the air around us is full of tiny particles and bacteria. If you had a mircroscope and you looked at the air you breathe you may well be alarmed to see it swarming with bacteria, bits of dead skin, manure from insects, bits of dead insects, tiny hairs and bits of wood and other materials. In short, our air is far from clean and it only looks that way because most of the things in it are only a few microns thick.

Now you shouldn't be too alarmed by this, as our body has plenty of methods of dealing with this. This is the role of our nostril hairs for instance which act as tiny filters only letting in the very smallest of particles while our lungs have a method of making sure they only extract oxygen from the air.

But when it is important to think about this is when you're in an industrial or research setting in which case there are many different situations where you need the air to be absolutely clean. For instance, if you are carrying out a very delicate chemical reaction in a scientific setting, then you will need to ensure that no contaminates effect the results. For instance if a tiny piece of skin were to get in your test tube, this could alter the acidity of the mixture and thus alter your results. Every one of those little particles has their own acidity, and when you're working in a very delicate environment this can be enough of a confounding factor to create a problem.

Meanwhile when spray painting a car for instance it may be that a tiny piece of dust could ruin the look and evenness of that paint job. Another situations which is perhaps even more vital is during surgery - in which case bacteria could get into the open wound and thus cause a serious illness. Even something like dust getting in can cause a serious problem.

As such it's very important to ensure in these situations that there are as few particles in the air as possible that aren't oxygen or carbon dioxide. There are many ways we can achieve this, and this includes using air filters, using vacuums, using clean rooms and using other settings perfectly crafted to control the presence of contaminates in the air. In such settings you might even need to wear a specially designed suit - as the amount of hair and skin you shed means that even you could be seen as a contaminate!