Haze - How to protect ourselves?

In previous post, I explained about Haze. Now, let's talk about what action we can take to protect ourselves. Here are the actions I took

(1) Wear N95 Mask when you are outdoor
During Haze season, N95 mask should be used instead. Check out this website from MOH in Singapore For those of you in US, if you are traveling to South East Asia between Aug and Oct, get yourself ready with N95 mask from the 3M N95 mask ">Amazon link here, especially these:



Children may require smaller size mask meant for children:


During Haze season, these items may be out of stock as most people will buy last minute. On the other hand, you don't want to stock these too much as the items have shelf-live of few years.

(2) Stay in air-con room as much as possible
Air con room has better air quality than outdoor during haze seasons. When the air is cooled down, condensation takes place as the particle matter may be trapped in water droplet.

(3) Get yourself an air purifier
Don't buy last minute. Get one ready if you are living in South East Asia. If you have allergic and other chronic health issue,there are professional equipments such as those from IQ Air. My boss bought one of these. But it's bulky and expensive. May be few thousand dollars.

There are many portable air purifiers around. See the list provided by National Environmental Agency in Singapore. But this list may not cover those cheaper and more affordable consumer oriented purifier that we find in electronic department. You may want to be careful as not all devices are effective. In particular, you may want to buy a "hepa filter" based purifier (not hepa type filter). The good news is Consumers Association of Singapore (CASE) had conducted the test on those. Check out their results that I downloaded for your convenience below:

2014 test

Clik here for 2013 test

Based on the above, I bought one from Novita (NAP611) and my second one from Delonghi (AC150). Considerations (not in sequence) are (a) whether the device is effective and to me, it is important that the device is listed at least in one of those websites above (b) capacity of the device, i.e. the coverage area (c) Performance as listed above (d) a sensor that indicates air quality (e) price

I know that both the devices I bought are effective because the sensor is pretty accurate in sensing the air quality. When the air is bad, the light indicator correctly indicate those. For example, if I cook, or if I open the door or window, I can see reaction from the device.