The Air We Breathe
Category : Women Health, Women Lifestyle, Women Personality
For more than a 100 years, researchers have been experimenting with various devices to try to filter out nasties from the air we breathe.
Researcher Dr Euan Tovey says the main problem has been that blocking out pollens and other particles also means you block out air, which makes it difficult to breathe.
However, he and others at the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research at the University of Sidney have been developing a nasal filter that does seem to work without making breathing difficult.
And even more importantly, it seems to be reducing the symptoms of hay fever in those who’ve tried it.
“The difference with our filter is that we have used a different principle of collecting particles, called impacting,” Dr Tovey says.
The filter, which looks like a pair of small goggles and fits inside each nostril, is currently not available commercially but has been used by hay fever sufferers in trials.
In the trials, those using the real nasal filter found their sniffles were reduced by more than half, compared with those fitted with dummy filters, whose sniffles got worse. The filter collected 97 per cent of the pollen particles.
Nearly all the trial participants said they would wear one again and the device didn’t seem to cause breathing problems.
“It is a drug-free way to tackle hay fever that could be used in certain circumstances, such as before going out to play sport,” Dr Tovey says.
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