Efficiency of bacterial filtration in various commercial air filters for hospital air conditioning.

Filtration efficiency of high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters is said to be over 99.97% of removal rate against the mist of thermogenerating-type of dioctyl phthalate with average particles diameter of 0.3 micrometer, as tested by the U.S. Military Standard 282 (1956). Filtration of bacterial aerosols through commercial air filters was tested to examine the efficiency of bacterial filtration with eight kinds of air filters. Percentage of bacterial filtration efficiency (% BFE) of three kinds of HEPA filters showed 100% BFE, while NBS-95 and NBS-85 showed over 99% BFE. BFE of NBS-75 air filter was 91.75%.