If you are trying to decide what to take to college for the first year or for your last year, or some year in between; the one most important thing for you to pack is cheap insurance for good health. That should be packed in the form of...well read on and see.
The whole concept of college is to round out personalities and education by introducing a variety of people, philosophies, and information. In the process students are submerged, even bombarded with all sorts of new people, thoughts, and ideas. And with all of that comes an incredible number of airborne germs that are shared through coughing, and sneezing, and transference of germs through contact of common surfaces.
2009 was a pretty scary time for students of all ages because of the rapid spread of the Swine Flu Virus. And that's just the virus that got the most press last year. There are surely a number of other strains that were responsible for making people sick. Close contact with large numbers of people always makes staying healthy more difficult because you are not able to choose the people you are around.
Living in the dorm with one or multiple room mates exposes you to their germs, and likewise exposes them to yours. This makes fertile ground for airborne bacteria and viruses to jump from one host to another and allows them to widen their circle of infection as they go.
The only way to even hope to control this almost certain spread of airborne germs is to filter the air-and not just with any filter. The filter that is most effective is a medical grade HEPA (or high efficiency particle arresting) filter that by definition must remove 99,997 out of every 10,000 airborne particulates bigger than.3 microns with 97% efficiency. This type of technology is the same that hospitals use to insure clean air.
And while being able to remove particulates is great, that's not all that is usually found in the air in a college dorm or any place else. Often there are gases, odors, and chemicals some of which can be identified and others not. Living in a dorm situation gives you very little control over what may find its way into the air in your space. So having a carbon filter that is adept at removing gases, odors, and chemicals is also a must.
But wait, that's not all you need. You will also need several prefilters to prolong the life of the HEPA and carbon filters. The prefilters are designed to filter both large and medium size particles-mainly the ones you can see. And the benefit to you is that they will save the HEPA and carbon filters from filling up so quickly, and will save you from having to constantly replace filters.
In fact these filters will practically guarantee that you will get 5 years of use from them. That means during your whole college career you'll never have to spend time changing the filter or suffer poor air quality while you wait for a new one to arrive.
So the title of this article suggested that there was one thing that was most important and the last several paragraphs have gone on about 4 things---mainly filters. But if you combine the 4 filters into one medical grade, portable, yet heavy duty HEPA air purifier, you will have what we think is the most important thing to take with you to college and beyond.
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