Emily Hartman · Founder & Editor, PawAirHome · Columbus, Ohio
I live in a 1990s house in Columbus, Ohio with my husband, two cats (Miso and Pepper), a beagle named Baxter, and a cockatiel named Kiwi. That's four pets under one roof, which means my house is basically a 24/7 dander factory — and for about five months a year, Ohio winters mean the windows stay shut the whole time.
I also have seasonal allergies that get noticeably worse around pet dander. For a long time my solution was candles, sprays, and switching litter brands every few months — none of which actually solved anything. It wasn't until I started digging into how air purifiers actually work (CADR ratings, filter chemistry, what an "ionizer" really does) that I realized most of the marketing on purifier packaging is noise, and the real differences between models are things nobody puts on the box.
That digging turned into PawAirHome.
What I actually do here
I don't run a testing lab, and I'm upfront about that. What I do is read — a lot. For every model we cover, I go through the manufacturer's published specs (CADR, filter type, decibel ratings by fan speed) and then work through the aggregated owner reviews on Amazon, often in the thousands or tens of thousands per model, looking specifically for patterns in what cat, dog, and bird owners report after weeks and months of daily use in real homes. I pay particular attention to the 1- and 3-star reviews, because that's where you find out what actually breaks, what actually annoys people, and what the marketing copy left out.
You can read the full breakdown of that process on the How We Analyze page.
Why trust this over another review site
We don't accept sponsored placements, and rankings on this site are based on data, not deals. When we link to a product on Amazon and you buy through that link, we may earn a commission — that's how the site supports itself, and it's disclosed on every page. It never changes which product we recommend first.
The editorial team (such as it is)
Miso and Pepper (cats), Baxter (beagle), and Kiwi (cockatiel) don't do any actual research, but they are the reason this site exists, and they show up in a lot of the examples throughout the articles.