Business
CBC Marketplace tested 5 top brands and their claims
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Clean indoor air is increasingly important as COVID-19 keeps Canadians inside. Popular air purifier brands are making a lot of promises about what they can do to keep your home safe, but a CBC Marketplace investigation found that a homemade DIY purifier can actually outperform some of the most well-known brands on the market.
There are plenty of claims for consumers to wade through: “the only air purifier, heater and fan to clean a whole room properly;” “UV-C light killing germs;” and “true HEPA filter” are just some of the promises Marketplace investigated.
University of Toronto engineering professor Jeffrey Siegel, a leading expert on ventilation, filtration and indoor air quality, calls it “a marketing jungle.”
Working with Siegel and his team, Marketplace put five popular brands to the test: the Levoit LV-H132, GermGuardian AC5350B, Dyson Pure Hot + Cool, BlueAir Blue Pure 211+ and the Honeywell HPA 160, as well as a DIY box fan with an added filter.
Air purifier sales in Canada jumped nine per cent in 2020 compared to pre-pandemic 2019, totalling $136 million, according to statistics from market research firm Euromonitor.
Clearing out COVID-19
Siegel said a good air purifier can also help clear out coronavirus particles and reduce the air’s viral load.
But air purifiers need to be efficient and sized appropriately for the space they are in. Air flow is also key. However Siegel warns all of those things are not enough on their own to protect your family from COVID-19. You still need masks, hand-washing and physical distancing to keep the virus at bay.
A HEPA (high efficiency particulate air) filter is a key part of the equation, too. Viruses such as the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 often attach themselves to dust or droplets, and a good air purifier with a HEPA filter can help capture them.
All HEPA filters are supposed to remove at least 99.97 per cent of dust, pollen, mold, bacteria and airborne particles. All of the models we tested use pleated HEPA filters.
Marketplace purchased 15 devices in total — three of the same models for each of the five brands used in our tests. Using incense smoke, Siegel and his team tested each device to see how much air-cleaning power it delivers — what’s known as the Clean Air Delivery Rate (CADR).
WATCH | Marketplace test reveals the most effective air purifier:
An $800 Dyson air purifier we tested doesn’t clean your air as well as some less-expensive products. Here’s what we found. 3:09
The CADR measures how long an air-purifying device takes to remove pollen, smoke and dust; different CADR numbers correspond to each one. The benchmark allows consumers to compare the effectiveness of portable air purifiers. You’ll find the CADR listed in either cubic feet per minute (cfm), or, in Canada, in cubic metres per hour (m3/hour).
Siegel recommends looking for a CADR rating for smoke of about 200-300 m3/hour (118-176 cfm) for cleaning small to medium-sized rooms. The smoke CADR is generally the lowest and most conservative number, said Siegel.
WATCH | Here’s how our test worked:
University of Toronto PhD student Amy Li explains how the lab calculates the clean air delivery rate. 0:33
Siegel also threw another set of air purifiers into the mix — a do-it-yourself version that consists of a box fan and a filter, taped together with painter’s tape. The filter he used was not a HEPA, but a MERV-11 filter, which is cheaper and easier to find. All of the materials were purchased at a hardware store for about $70.
Results
The BlueAir Blue Pure 211+, priced at about $400, performed the best in our tests, with an average CADR of approximately 560 m3/hour.
The poorest performer was also the cheapest product — the $150 Levoit LV-H132, with an average CADR of approximately 60 m3/hour.
In its response to Marketplace, Levoit said this model is reviewed and rated positively by customers and is one of Canada’s top-selling products; it also noted that this is a desktop model specifically designed for smaller spaces.
While a poorly performing cheaper model might fall into the category of “you get what you pay for,” our $70 DIY box fan and filter outperformed the Levoit by a large margin, averaging just under 200 m3/hour in our tests.
It also outperformed the $800 Dyson Pure Hot+Cool.
At the pricier end of the scale, the Dyson Pure Hot+Cool did not perform as well as some of the less-expensive products.
The Dysons we tested averaged a CADR of about 140 m3/hour, lower than most of the other air purifiers we tested, and well below the approximately 200 m3/hr Siegel recommends for cleaning small to medium-sized rooms.
Dyson air purifiers consistently test lower than other air purifiers; Consumer Reports tested the Dyson TP04 Pure Cool Air Purifier and found it “one of the worst-rated air purifiers in CR’s [CADR] tests, despite being one of the most expensive.”
The Dyson Pure Hot+Cool HP04 also has a heater. In this case, Siegel said, “it is clear that you are paying more for the features than you are for the air purifier.”
Marketplace took its results and questions to Dyson engineer David Hill at the company’s headquarters in Malmesbury, England.
“We are, we think, delivering quite a good value proposition for the consumer,” he said, stressing that Dyson purifiers can sense pollutants in the air as well as capture them, and also provide strong air projection.
Dyson has developed its own testing methodology, the POLAR test method, which, unlike the CADR, Hill said, “measures the intelligence of the purifier, the ability for it to know when that room is clean or dirty and automatically react, and its ability to mix that pure air around the room.”
While Hill agrees that CADR is an important part of purification, he notes that it is important that products also sense and capture pollutants, and project air.
“I think what we’re trying to do is pull back a little bit from the CADR metric,” he said. “Not everyone needs an enormous CADR, has huge rooms or incredibly dirty air.”
Several experts told Marketplace the CADR is the most important metric and an internationally recognized benchmark.
“CADR is what you want to know, period,” said Francis (Bud) Offermann, an indoor air quality researcher who has helped develop test methods for the performance of portable air cleaners with the American Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers (AHAM).
“An air cleaner with a very high-efficient filter and very little air-flow rate will have a low CADR and little air-cleaning ability; same for an air cleaner with a very high air-flow rate and a very low filter efficiency.”
In terms of price and performance, the Honeywell True HEPA Whole Room Air Purifier with Allergen Remover HPA160 performed in the middle range of our pack, averaging a CADR of about 180 m3/hr. Marketplace found this product retailing for around $200.
Honeywell said its air purifiers are AHAM certified and compliant with AHAM standards, and are independently validated through repeatable, peer-reviewed tests.
Expert says some UVC light claims are ‘rubbish’
One of the key promises from GermGuardian is that its AC5350B 28″ Air Purifier with HEPA, UVC & Digital purifier is equipped with a UV-C light that can “kill germs.” Marketplace paid around $200 for this model.
While some professional-grade UV lights can do that, the experts Marketplace interviewed said the small dose of UV light GermGuardian’s purifier delivers is not doing much of anything.
James Malley, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of New Hampshire and an expert on UV light, said that while UV-C light has been used for over 100 years to disinfect and kill viruses, the product must be properly designed and operated, and must use strong, directed UV-C light.
An indoor air scientist explains what you can do to keep your home’s air clean without buying a purifier. 4:00
Although there are some good UV-C products, Malley warned there are some companies making “rubbish” claims about the efficacy of their UV-C lights.
After analyzing the UV dose and the UV-C power of the GermGuardian, Malley said he feels confident that the UV dose would not be enough to significantly reduce airborne pathogens.
GermGuardian did not give a clear response to our questions about its UV light, but said its purifier “eliminates over 99 per cent of airborne germs in a two-hour time frame,” and all their purifiers are independently tested and AHAM verified for CADR.
If you happen to already have any of these devices, Siegel said you don’t need to toss them out. They just may not be cleaning your air as thoroughly as you had hoped.
Tips for buying an air purifier
- Look for the CADR rating on the box or the company’s website.
- Siegel says a smoke CADR rating of about 200-300 cubic metre/hour (m3/hr) is good for a small to medium-sized room; this is equivalent to a CADR of about 118-176 cubic feet/minute (cfm).
- Note that most companies provide the CADR in imperial measurements, not metric; use a conversion calculator here.
- Look for purifiers that have the right cleaning power for the room(s) you want to use them in.
- Seigel and other indoor air experts said you should avoid ion generators and plasma air cleaners, which can emit ozone, a respiratory hazard that can cause serious health problems.
- Avoid air cleaners with photocatalytic oxidation (PCO). PCO air cleaners have been shown to generate formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, nitrogen dioxide, and carbon monoxide.
Source:- CBC.ca
Business
Bitcoin's latest 'halving' has arrived. Here's what you need to know – Business News – Castanet.net
The “miners” who chisel bitcoins out of complex mathematics are taking a 50% pay cut — effectively reducing new production of the world’s largest cryptocurrency, again.
Bitcoin’s latest “halving” appeared to occur Friday night. Soon after the highly anticipated event, the price of bitcoin held steady at about $63,907.
Now, all eyes are on what will happen down the road. Beyond bitcoin’s long-term price behavior, which relies heavily on other market conditions, experts point to potential impacts on the day-to-day operations of the asset’s miners themselves. But, as with everything in the volatile cryptoverse, the future is hard to predict.
Here’s what you need to know.
WHAT IS BITCOIN HALVING AND WHY DOES IT MATTER?
Bitcoin “halving,” a preprogrammed event that occurs roughly every four years, impacts the production of bitcoin. Miners use farms of noisy, specialized computers to solve convoluted math puzzles; and when they complete one, they get a fixed number of bitcoins as a reward.
Halving does exactly what it sounds like — it cuts that fixed income in half. And when the mining reward falls, so does the number of new bitcoins entering the market. That means the supply of coins available to satisfy demand grows more slowly.
Limited supply is one of bitcoin’s key features. Only 21 million bitcoins will ever exist, and more than 19.5 million of them have already been mined, leaving fewer than 1.5 million left to pull from.
So long as demand remains the same or climbs faster than supply, bitcoin prices should rise as halving limits output. Because of this, some argue that bitcoin can counteract inflation — still, experts stress that future gains are never guaranteed.
HOW OFTEN DOES HALVING OCCUR?
Per bitcoin’s code, halving occurs after the creation of every 210,000 “blocks” — where transactions are recorded — during the mining process.
No calendar dates are set in stone, but that divvies out to roughly once every four years.
WILL HALVING IMPACT BITCOIN’S PRICE?
Only time will tell. Following each of the three previous halvings, the price of bitcoin was mixed in the first few months and wound up significantly higher one year later. But as investors well know, past performance is not an indicator of future results.
“I don’t know how significant we can say halving is just yet,” said Adam Morgan McCarthy, a research analyst at Kaiko. “The sample size of three (previous halvings) isn’t big enough to say ‘It’s going to go up 500% again,’ or something.”
At the time of the last halving in May 2020, for example, bitcoin’s price stood at around $8,602, according to CoinMarketCap — and climbed almost seven-fold to nearly $56,705 by May 2021. Bitcoin prices nearly quadrupled a year after July 2016’s halving and shot up by almost 80 times one year out from bitcoin’s first halving in November 2012. Experts like McCarthy stress that other bullish market conditions contributed to those returns.
Friday’s halving also arrives after a year of steep increases for bitcoin. As of Friday night, bitcoin’s price stood at $63,907 per CoinMarketCap. That’s down from the all-time-high of about $73,750 hit last month, but still double the asset’s price from a year ago.
Much of the credit for bitcoin’s recent rally is given to the early success of a new way to invest in the asset — spot bitcoin ETFs, which were only approved by U.S. regulators in January. A research report from crypto fund manager Bitwise found that these spot ETFs, short for exchange-traded funds, saw $12.1 billion in inflows during the first quarter.
Bitwise senior crypto research analyst Ryan Rasmussen said persistent or growing ETF demand, when paired with the “supply shock” resulting from the coming halving, could help propel bitcoin’s price further.
“We would expect the price of Bitcoin to have a strong performance over the next 12 months,” he said. Rasmussen notes that he’s seen some predict gains reaching as high as $400,000, but the more “consensus estimate” is closer to the $100,000-$175,000 range.
Other experts stress caution, pointing to the possibility the gains have already been realized.
In a Wednesday research note, JPMorgan analysts maintained that they don’t expect to see post-halving price increases because the event “has already been already priced in” — noting that the market is still in overbought conditions per their analysis of bitcoin futures.
WHAT ABOUT MINERS?
Miners, meanwhile, will be challenged with compensating for the reduction in rewards while also keeping operating costs down.
“Even if there’s a slight increase in bitcoin price, (halving) can really impact a miner’s ability to pay bills,” Andrew W. Balthazor, a Miami-based attorney who specializes in digital assets at Holland & Knight, said. “You can’t assume that bitcoin is just going to go to the moon. As your business model, you have to plan for extreme volatility.”
Better-prepared miners have likely laid the groundwork ahead of time, perhaps by increasing energy efficiency or raising new capital. But cracks may arise for less-efficient, struggling firms.
One likely outcome: Consolidation. That’s become increasingly common in the bitcoin mining industry, particularly following a major crypto crash in 2022.
In its recent research report, Bitwise found that total miner revenue slumped one month after each of the three previous halvings. But those figures had rebounded significantly after a full year — thanks to spikes in the price of bitcoin as well as larger miners expanding their operations.
Time will tell how mining companies fare following this latest halving. But Rasmussen is betting that big players will continue to expand and utilize the industry’s technology advances to make operations more efficient.
WHAT ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT?
Pinpointing definitive data on the environmental impacts directly tied to bitcoin halving is still a bit of a question mark. But it’s no secret that crypto mining consumes a lot of energy overall — and operations relying on pollutive sources have drawn particular concern over the years.
Recent research published by the United Nations University and Earth’s Future journal found that the carbon footprint of 2020-2021 bitcoin mining across 76 nations was equivalent to emissions of burning 84 billion pounds of coal or running 190 natural gas-fired power plants. Coal satisfied the bulk of bitcoin’s electricity demands (45%), followed by natural gas (21%) and hydropower (16%).
Environmental impacts of bitcoin mining boil largely down to the energy source used. Industry analysts have maintained that pushes towards the use of more clean energy have increased in recent years, coinciding with rising calls for climate protections from regulators around the world.
Production pressures could result in miners looking to cut costs. Ahead of the latest halving, JPMorgan cautioned that some bitcoin mining firms may “look to diversify into low energy cost regions” to deploy inefficient mining rigs.
Business
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Business
Netflix stock sinks on disappointing revenue forecast, move to scrap membership metrics – Yahoo Canada Finance
Netflix (NFLX) stock slid as much as 9.6% Friday after the company gave a second quarter revenue forecast that missed estimates and announced it would stop reporting quarterly subscriber metrics closely watched by Wall Street.
On Thursday, Netflix guided to second quarter revenue of $9.49 billion, a miss compared to consensus estimates of $9.51 billion.
The company said it will stop reporting quarterly membership numbers starting next year, along with average revenue per member, or ARM.
“As we’ve evolved our pricing and plans from a single to multiple tiers with different price points depending on the country, each incremental paid membership has a very different business impact,” the company said.
Netflix reported first quarter earnings that beat across the board on Thursday, with another 9 million-plus subscribers added in the quarter.
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Subscriber additions of 9.3 million beat expectations of 4.8 million and followed the 13 million net additions the streamer added in the fourth quarter. The company added 1.7 million paying users in Q1 2023.
Revenue beat Bloomberg consensus estimates of $9.27 billion to hit $9.37 billion in the quarter, an increase of 14.8% compared to the same period last year as the streamer leaned on revenue initiatives like its crackdown on password-sharing and ad-supported tier, in addition to the recent price hikes on certain subscription plans.
Netflix’s stock has been on a tear in recent months, with shares currently trading near the high end of its 52-week range. Wall Street analysts had warned that high expectations heading into the print could serve as an inherent risk to the stock price.
Earnings per share (EPS) beat estimates in the quarter, with the company reporting EPS of $5.28, well above consensus expectations of $4.52 and nearly double the $2.88 EPS figure it reported in the year-ago period. Netflix guided to second quarter EPS of $4.68, ahead of consensus calls for $4.54.
Profitability metrics also came in strong, with operating margins sitting at 28.1% for the first quarter compared to 21% in the same period last year.
The company previously guided to full-year 2024 operating margins of 24% after the metric grew to 21% from 18% in 2023. Netflix expects margins to tick down slightly in Q2 to 26.6%.
Free cash flow came in at $2.14 billion in the quarter, above consensus calls of $1.9 billion.
Meanwhile, ARM ticked up 1% year over year — matching the fourth quarter results. Wall Street analysts expect ARM to pick up later this year as both the ad-tier impact and price hike effects take hold.
On the ads front, ad-tier memberships increased 65% quarter over quarter after rising nearly 70% sequentially in Q3 2023 and Q4 2023. The ads plan now accounts for over 40% of all Netflix sign-ups in the markets it’s offered in.
Alexandra Canal is a Senior Reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on X @allie_canal, LinkedIn, and email her at alexandra.canal@yahoofinance.com.
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