I was searching the web for stories about the fires in California and came across an interesting blog post that was written by Nickie Rothwell's on her Los Angeles home staging business blog.  The post was about the importance of changing air conditioning filters.  Nickie stated that there is a lot more to dust than many people realize.  She stated that dust can be little bits of animal dander, dirt, tiny pieces of fabric from clothing, carpets and furniture as well as other more dangerous pollutants.  With the California fires, there is probably a lot more in the air out there than most people would ever let into their lungs.  The dust from a burned building can contain asbestos, fiberglass from insulation and other nasty stuff.  Here in Austin we don't have that sort of thing, but we have a lot of other stuff floating around.  Pollen and mold spores are pretty much a year round thing thing here.

So back to the point about changing your filters regularly.  You are doing more than just cutting down on dust when you change filters regularly.  If you use the pleated filters that filter out more than regular dust, you are already ahead of many people.  You don't have to change that type quite as often (but you probably should anyway) and they do a great jog with things like fine particulate matter  such as pollen and mold spores.  Changing filters often also makes your AC run more efficiently.  A clogged filter reduces the rate of air flow and puts an extra strain on the fan motor.  If you don't use filters (big mistake!) or use really cheap ones, the coil inside the AC unit can become dirty, which also makes the unit less efficient.

So do your house, and your lungs, a favor and change those filters often.