Independent Lab Testing

The CDC only trusts two labs in the United States: their own internal lab—the National Personal Protective Technology Laboratory (NPPTL)—and independent laboratory Nelson Labs in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Nelson is famous for creating many of the many standardized medical tests that we hold N95 and Surgical masks to protect healthcare workers.

During the pandemic, our parent company Armbrust USA became close with Nelson in an effort to create the very best medical masks made for consumers.

At Nano, we aim to do the same thing with home air filters, but the problem is that there’s no existing standard for the level of filtration that we built our HVAC filters to, so we asked Nelson Labs to apply their VFE (Viral Filtration Efficiency) test to.

Recently, we asked them to modify their existing VFE test for medical masks to test our air filter, which has never been done before.

The Viral Filtration Efficiency (VFE) test determines the filtration efficiency by comparing the viral control counts to test article effluent counts. The test is conducted using the bacteriophage phiX174 as the challenge organism. Challenge controls are maintained at 1100-3300 plaque-forming units (PFU) with a mean particle size (MPS) of 3.0 ± 0.3 microns. This allows filtration efficiencies to be reported up to >99.9%.

Normal air filters are not held to anywhere near these standards – and in fact, the MERV rating doesn’t even measure anything smaller than 1 microns, with MERV 13 filters only rated to filter out 50% of particles at 1 micron.

As you can see in the official report below, the Nano Home Air Filters eliminated 98.3% of all virus particles:

Our aim is to make the best home air filters ever made and this is just the start.