DIY Air Purifiers Keeping Bay Area Neighbors Safe

The West is on fire, and as the winds turn and blanket the Bay Area with smoke, we are seeing the return of hazy skies and poisonous air. Common Humanity Collective is a volunteer mutual aid organization making DIY air purifiers capable of removing the smallest, most harmful smoke particles (PM2.5) to create clean indoor air. Marshaling the passion of our community, we can produce these purifiers at a small fraction of a commercial product's cost and distribute them for free to people in the Bay who need an affordable alternative. Neighbors receiving CHC purifiers live in areas with the worst average air quality and also include those who want increased protection from airborne viruses like SARS-CoV-2 and its variants.

Every $30 provides supplies to make a single air purifier. These purifiers, designed to be an improvement over typical box fan and filter contrivances, involve a careful, quality-controlled production process. You can view the results of our comparison with a commercial air purifier in addition to assembly instructions.

Who we are: Our group, Common Humanity Collective, was born at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic when a number of UC Berkeley students began making essential PPE to be rapidly dispatched for free to our neighbors abandoned by the state. Over the past three years, we have grown and evolved into a decentralized effort involving over 250+ volunteers, which altogether distributed nearly 60,000 DIY reusable submicron face masks and 7,000 gallons of lab-churned hand sanitizer — especially crucial supplies during times when they had disappeared from store shelves. You can read about our early work here, in the LA Times, SF Chronicle, and Mother Jones.

Our strategy: We have been organizing to continually adapt our infrastructure so that we can keep each other safe with masks and air purifiers. Our organizing team meets weekly to plan builds that are masked and outdoors, with rotating groups of 60+ volunteers. Between successive builds, we collaborate closely with other mutual aid groups and Bay Area partners to dispatch masks and purifiers to neighbors impacted by structural racism and ableism. Learn more about how we work together through our interviews with The Response and Red Planet. We have made hundreds of these air purifiers, but we need your help to purchase additional supplies so that we can continue this mutual aid project, creating clean air today while building resilience and solidarity in our communities for the future. We deeply appreciate your support.