I have insane allergies, to the point that they are life threatening. I have always wondered about how I could detect formaldehyde and other chemicals. I have asthma attacks and anaphylactic reactions to chemicals put in materials, and clothing, etc.. This machine can only detect formaldehyde, but nonetheless, I was very excited to be able to test one out. We, as a family, went out on the town and tested this at mattress stores, furniture stores, and our local Lowes home improvement store. I also tested air outside by busy streets. Before testing out this machine, I did a lot of research, and studied many a government page. There is a lot of information, and not surprising, some contradictory information on these sites. One thing that is known, is that it is a carcinogenic chemical. It’s important to test your air, and know what your body is breathing in, and absorbing. This machine is pretty easy to read. You can choose between mg, and ppm, as your reading. I did parts per million. That’s what the charts on the OSHA and other government sites used. You can find formaldehyde everywhere which is scary. Exhaust from cars will put out formaldehyde. They use it in a lot of building materials, and furniture, especially foam. RVs and mobile homes can also be hotbeds for formaldehyde. FEMA recently was sued for the high formaldehyde counts in their trailers. You can never get rid of the formaldehyde in your home, it’s everywhere, but if you know the count, you can lower it with proper ventilation, and changing items out. Higher counts can cause asthma, sinus infections, eye and ear irritation, cancer, allergic reactions, and more. If you are pregnant, and or, have little ones in the home, they are even more susceptible. This reader is very simple to operate. The instruction pamphlet is just that, a pamphlet. It is pretty easy to follow. I tuned the audible alarm off, and left the vibration on. I didn’t want to freak people out. You can set the high and low alarm parameters as well. They come preset as 0.1 as the low, and 0.3 as the high, and I left them there. I sis read in my research that OSHA will only allow workers to work in an environment with a reading of 0.75, for only 8 hours at a time. One of the furniture stores I went into had very high readings, of up to around 0.936ppm. That is very high. We had been talking to a salesman for a while, when I finally brought it to his attention. He said they recently had construction work done on the building, and one coworker became ill. He was very concerned. I actually emailed him the photo of the reading, and he said he was going to contact OSHA. Only you can protect yourself, so it’s important to know what the environment you are in is really like. Believe it or not, they even “size” material in formaldehyde, and other harmful chemicals. If your clothing, or leather item, you just bought has an odor to it, more than likely it’s the chemicals your clothing was processed with. Some clothing shuts my throat just by being too close it, and especially by touching it.

There are only 5 buttons on the machine, and they are clearly labeled. The main button is the power button, which is the center button. When you press it , hold it for a second, and you wil hear a beep. The screen will pop on, and count down from 10. Then you will notice the reading pop up. At the bottom right, of the reading, you will notice the air temperature reading. It comes on in Celsius, but you can switch it to Fahrenheit by pressing the right arrow button once. You will also see the battery reading. This requires 3 AA batteries to operate. They are not included, and no tool is needed to access the battery compartment, which is located on the back of the unit. If you do  quick press of the power button, it will bring you to a menu screen, where you can choose to change the settings for the high and low, or alarm on or off, as well as an auto off. Mine powers off at 30 minutes. You press the up and down arrows to scroll through the list. The first list is only two items. Bring it down to alarm, and then press the right arrow button. That will take you to the list to choose alarm options. To get back to the main screen, just press the button on the left once. The “autooff” section is where you would go to choose your preferred time for the auto off. If you had a small tripod, you could attach it to the back of the unit, to have it freestanding in an area. This is good if you want to walk around the room, and hit items, to create more airflow, and still being able to read the unit. For example, when we hit the mattresses, the formaldehyde reading would go up. You need to create a flow of the item in the air. You will also notice that when the air system comes on in the room, your reading just may go up as well. I find this machine very easy to operate, fascinating, and highly helpful.

Some of the sites I researched are as follows:

https://www.osha.gov/OshDoc/data_General_Facts/formaldehyde-factsheet.pdf

http://www.cpsc.gov/PageFiles/121919/AN%20UPDATE%20ON%20FORMALDEHYDE%20final%200113.pdf

https://www3.epa.gov/ttn/atw/hlthef/formalde.html

I received this in exchange for an unbiased and honest review. – TONOR’s Portable Formaldehyde Detector with Sound-light Alarm.

If you would like to purchase this product, it can be found here on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01HDA6TKE/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1