Tech company works to keep indoor air clean too during the COVID-19 pandemic

(FOX 2) - While we're staying home to stay safe during the COVID-19 pandemic, getting some fresh air is an important part of staying both physically and mentally healthy. 

And that doesn't just mean going outside every now and then - it's important to keep your indoor air clean, too. 

"Now as we're thinking about a world where we're spending more time indoors, in our homes, it's really important to think about the quality of air that we're breathing," says Jaya Rao, the co-CEO of Molekule. It's a San Francisco-based company aimed at not only filtering air pollutants but destroying them. 

"Molekule's technology is unique in that we don't just capture pollutants like a traditional filter, we capture and destroy pollutants at a microscopic level. And the way we do that is we have a special filter that's coated with a catalyst and LEDs inside of our device that creates a chemical reaction on the surface of our filter that allows us to destroy pollutants at a microscopic level," she explains. 

Molekule believes that clean air has never been more important since most people in the world are spending more time inside their houses.

"It's important to recognize that a wide variety of pollutants that can concentrate indoors, be it dander from your pet, other allergens or even airborne chemicals that we're releasing from all the cleaning products that we're using."

While the company does have a medical-grade purifier that the FDA has recently granted to destroy some airborne viruses, for this episode of Tech Talk we were mostly interested in their home filters.

"The EPA has been stating for decades now that indoor air can be 2 to 5 times more polluted than the air outdoors. The reason for that is that pollutants make their way indoors and then they concentrate," Rao explains. 

Just this week the company has released even more brand new technology, their Air Mini Plus, which has smart technology built-in.

"The ability to both sense particulant matter in the air and respond to that particulate matter," Rao says. 

You can find more at their website, www.molekule.com.