What started out as a solution to his wife's severe allergies has become a $5-million-a-year air-purification business for Sam Teitelbaum.
With the carbon-based air-cleaning technology he helped develop to counter spouse Florence's condition attributed to extreme sensitivity to various environmental chemicals found in the air, food, water, building materials and fabrics, Teitelbaum founded AllerAir Industries Inc. 10 years ago.
Sam posing beside an explosion-proof air filtration system
With fewer than 20 employees, the private company is challenging industry multinationals like Bionaire, Honeywell International Inc. and Sharp Corp.
"We're kind of the specialists now," the president said from the cramped headquarters and manufacturing facility in St. Laurent.
Jeffrey Kanel, vice-president of business development, noted AllerAir is among the first firms to combine HEPA filters with a mass acitivated carbon bed that together trap 99.97 per cent of all airborne particles as well as absorb chemicals, gases and odours.
Activated carbon - the type used in military gas masks, hospitals and large food-storage facilities - is a natural substance that has been treated to open millions of tiny pores which attract and trap odors, chemicals and gases. It is made from a wide range of source materials from coal and coconut shells to peat moss and bone.
Kanel and Teitelbaum said that most mass-market air cleaners/filters only trap particles and have no more than a few token ounces of carbon while AllerAir's MAC-B filters contain pounds of carbon to safely and effectively remove dangerous substances from the air.
"We hope air purifiers will some day be as common as bottled water," Kanel said.
AllerAir systems have applications for residential, commercial, industrial, medical and military use. They've been installed in school classrooms, fashion houses and military installations in Iraq. The company recently received orders from South Korea after the government there introduced new indoor air-quality standards for public buildings.
Custom-made specialized models are used for smokers, disaster restoration, security threat situations and microbiological contamination. "We're 100 per cent safe," Teitelbaum said. "We even use unbleached,organically grown cotton for our pre-filters."
Kanel said the company works with allergists and respiratory specialists.
"Everybody needs an air purifier," environmental medical specialist Dr. Doris Rapp told The Gazette from her Arizona clinic.
The pediatric allergist and New York Times best-selling author - her latest book is Our Toxic World: A Wake Up Call - said she uses AllerAir products because "they have very high standards and they have different machines at affordable costs. Others might be as good, but I'm not familiar with them like AllerAir."
Teitelbaum said there are about 5,000 permutations of the basic filter model. The units range in price from $259 U.S. for the small home or office models with four pounds of carbon to $25,000 U.S. for the explosion-proof military-strength purifier using 2,000 pounds of carbon.
Kanel said sales have been increasing 25 per cent a month the past three years, with 98 per cent of AllerAir's market outside of Canada. About 4,200 units a year are sold.
For more information on AllerAir air filtration systems, air cleaners, air purifiers, air scrubbers, call (888) 395-0330 or visit www.allerairsolutions.com
article credit: MIKE KING, The Gazette, Published: Friday, May 19, 2006, mking@thegazette.canwest.com
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