Buy Oregon Scientific AR112N Indoor Air Quality Monitor, BlackOregon Scientific AR112N Indoor Air Quality Monitor, Black Product Description:
- Measures level of indoor VOC, which can cause health problems
- Icons show different air quality levels; alarm for bad air quality
- Displays history of air level quality, temperature, and humidity
- Electro-luminescent backlighting for easy viewing in low light
- Includes AC adapter and two AA batteries
Product Description
This unique product continuously samples the air in your home or office and alerts you when the concentration of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC¿s) reaches a harmful level.VOC gasses are invisible to the human eye. They are chemical compounds often found in building materials, household detergents and bleaches, cigarettes, material additives, adhesives and the like. Easy to use - just plug it in. Graphic display shows the levels of VOC¿s providing a quick and easy method to view the air quality. It can be adjusted to be more or less sensitive depending upon the user¿s specific needs and lifestyle. Features an air quality level alarm that sounds when the air quality falls below a set level, a choice of sampling interval rates, a backlight for easy viewing in low light, and an indoor thermometer with humidity percentage readings.
Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
49 of 50 people found the following review helpful.
Nice idea, but how sensitive can this device be?
By Joanna Daneman
I've worked with analytical equipment designed to detect ppb (parts per billion) of volatiles, so I realize that a home unit such as the Oregon Scientific Indoor Air Quality Monitor scarcely can compete with that kind of sensitivity. But is it any good?
The really useful things on the unit are humidity and temperature, good for monitoring the quality of household air on a daily basis anyway. As to the VOC (volatile organic compound) sensitivity, I assumed it must be in the high ppm --which means that by the time the device alarms, your nose might have told you something was wrong long before. So, being the geeky, techy type I am, I decided to test the unit out. First, I dipped a cotton swab in shoe polish (which has a petroleum distillate of low volatility as a component.) Held near the air intake, the unit changed from "very good" to "good", meaning the unit did detect something. (The unit shows you air quality with a series of smiley faces, smiling, straight and frowny.) Later, I dipped a swab in household spray cleanser (a more volatile organic as a component) and the unit showed the same neutral face. No alarm went off.
But...here's the fun thing. A day or two later, I had a window open in an adjoining room to the monitor, and someone was burning trash outside somewhere. A waft of smoke and fumes rushed through the house, only for a moment, and the monitor alarmed. It shut off right away, as the air was only momentarily polluted but this did show the unit functions when fumes are present. The smoke was transitory, clearing quite quickly, but the unit detected it--I barely had time to sniff the burning odor.
I would not rely on this device as anything but a confirmation that something is amiss with the air, and it's more of a curiousity than a real detector, such as a smoke detector. But I did once experience a situation where a small fire in an area produced fumes and NO smoke, and our detectors were silent while the room (at work) filled with a noxious odor. So this could be a good back-up to the smoke alarm.
My summary: more of a fun item than a hard-line household detector, but it does seem to work, and it does measure humidity, so it's fine as far as it goes.
20 of 20 people found the following review helpful.
clarified
By A Customer
as a clarification to another user's review of this product, the reason the device did not detect pesticide is because pesticides have a low evaporation rate at room temperature, and thus simply holding them under the detector won't set it off; whereas a can of highly vaporous gasoline will instantly sound the alarm.
as for the orange peel... peeling the orange near the device causes dispersion of orange oil in the peel into the surrounding air. it may be that the oil is then oxidized in the air, causing the alarm to sound on the device.
However, it seems to me this device is more aimed at measuring the average air quality over an extended period of time in an area; and the alarm feature is probably not aimed at detection of highly localized pollution that disperses in a short period of time.
That is to say, if you were to put the device in your bathroom, you would not want to use the 70-second measurement feature, since the alarm sounding every time someone uses the facilities is not a very good indication of the overall air quality--and consequent health hazard--in the bathroom.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful.Nice digital thermometer and humidity detector.
By Ryk E. Spoor
The VOC measurement, however, is basically just a gee-whiz without much use, as noted by other reviewers. The meter measures the concentrations of VOCs based on a reference contaminant, which happens to be acetone -- one of the easiest to detect in this kind of device. It's utterly useless for detecting a number of other materials -- most notably formaldehyde, which is not detectable by the instrument until long, long after it's past Federal safety standards. Formaldehyde is, unfortunately, one of the most common VOCs to encounter (among other sources, it is released by particleboard) and is, in addition to being an irritant like other VOCs, also classed as a carcinogen.The thermometer and humidity level detection is fine, but don't expect this thing to do anything else for your IAQ monitoring.
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