[throwway120385]

This kinda makes sense. Water vapor diffuses out through the building materials so why wouldn't VOCs diffuse into those materials?

What you're looking for are not HEPA filters but organic vapor filtering. If you were shopping for a respirator it would be easy but organic vapor extractors I think are a lot more expensive than HEPA filters. I looked in to it when I was doing a couple of oil based coatings for a home renovation project.

[wongarsu]

A lot of air purifiers are advertised as HEPA but really contain a filter stack consisting of a pre-filter, a HEPA filter and an activated carbon filter. Those would presumably help against VOCs, assuming you change the filter frequently enough

[bonesss]

Compare those air ‘purifiers’ with the activated charcoal setups they use on cannabis grow operations, and you’ll get a sense of what volume of charcoal and air circulation is necessary to combat those small particulates. Purifiers help in theory but are nowhere near effective or active enough to combat off gassing or VOC dispersals in practice.

[s0rce]

Frequent replacement is critical, my understanding is the activated carbon filters typically provided have very limited capacity. More so when compared to the lifetime of the hepa.

[plorkyeran]

"Frequently enough" with the size of the carbon filter a typical air purifier has would be close to daily.