I’ve been running a couple air filters in my house. There’s plenty of pollen in the air and we also have a woodsy hint of burning Canadian forest. The filters help quite a bit.
They would take some modification to be useful during a radioactive fallout event. The idea is to flood a room or a house with clean filtered air. The trick is to have the indoor space at a higher air pressure than the outside.
It’s similar to the way self contained breathing apparatus works in the Fire Service. The old ones worked like a scuba mask. As you drew in breath a diaphragm would trip a valve allowing air to flow from the tank. The downside: if the mask did not fit perfectly you could draw in toxic smoke through the gaps. The newer ones kinda work like that but with one extra feature. The mask is under a constant pressure, like a cpap, so that any gaps in the mask fit would cause air to blow out the gaps. Sure beats sucking in nasty stuff.
So here your room or house is like the inside of the firefighter’s mask. It’s at a higher pressure than the outside. Any gaps or cracks in the room would blow the radioactive particles out. If your structure is close to air tight a simple one way valve would exhaust the stale air allowing it to be replaced with fresh.
Back in the 70’s there were some pretty simple designs for air filters. One used toilet paper rolls, big metal juice cans and a fan.
Of course, the trick is to some way to power your air filter, which is a whole ‘nother subject.
-Sixbears
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