Fleeing the city for the mountains doesn't really help. One cubic metre of mountain air at an altitude of around 2000 metres still contains 10 million particles.
Assuming that you breathe in and out half a litre of air with every breath, that would be a whopping 10,000 particles per breath, assuming a rather low 20 million particles per cubic metre of city air.
How dangerous are the particles in the air?
How do we deal with them? Stopping breathing is not an alternative, and despite the impressive amount of tiny solids in the air we breathe, we are all still alive. In fact, many particles are harmless; the body and especially the lungs can handle them well. We also breathe out a large proportion of the particles we inhale.
However, not all substances that we inhale are harmless. The coronavirus pandemic has made us realise this. Not only viruses are dangerous. Soot, asbestos, nicotine, solvents - there are numerous pollutants that enter the body via the air we breathe and can have a massive impact on our health. In addition to the "chemistry" of the particles, their size also plays a role. Particles with a diameter of less than around 25 µm (for comparison: a human hair is 40 to 70 µm thick) are respirable, i.e. they penetrate into the alveoli. Particles less than 1 µm in diameter are even alveolar, i.e. they can enter the bloodstream through the alveoli.
Clean breathing air is crucial
So what do you do with this knowledge? It's best not to panic, but also not to lose sight of the fact that the air you breathe should be as clean as possible. That's why mountain air is better than city air - better 10 million particles per cubic metre than 50 million. And that is why there are strict limit values for many (harmful) substances in industry in terms of their concentration in the air at the workplace.
Industrial vacuum cleaners and extraction systems from Ruwac ensure that these limits are adhered to. If they are equipped with class M filters (for moderately hazardous dusts), they filter the extracted air with a maximum permeability of 0.1%. This means that 999 out of 1000 particles are retained in the filter and only one is released back into the environment. We think that's a very good rate. In the case of class H filters, which must be used for substances that are hazardous to health and for extracting respirable fine dust, the maximum degree of permeability is only 0.005%. This means that out of 100,000 particles that are sucked up, 99,995 remain in the filter. Such filters are used in Ruwac extraction systems, industrial vacuum cleaners or dust extractors for the pharmaceutical, food or chemical industries, for example.