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If you'll read that Straight Dope link on the first page, it seems like a good starting point for learning just how much good HEPA filters do as well.

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Cecil seemed out of his depth and a little perverse in that column. For instance, exposure to sunlight to help cure SADS has been used for a long time now and is not medical quackery. Yet he casts aspersions on it in a sort of guilt by association way in contrast to the very scientific study he cites. It looks like the scientists were right on this one and he was wrong.

He didn't seem all that hot on the HEPA filters either. Finding HEPA not effective in a study and surmising that this is because particles get stored in your mattress and such isn't that good a conclusion. First of all, every time you sit down on your couch or whatever, more particles will come out. Second, anyone with asthma can have it outdoors away from their couches and mattresses just as they can indoors, and it happens all the time. So clearly while stuff being absorbed into your living environs and popped back out at you when you get next to concentrations of it can be a problem, it's logically not the only problem. It would seem likely to me that if HEPA units clean out the air, they can only be making an improvement. How notable, I don't know or claim to. But if you're allergic to spores and those spores are being trapped in HEPA filters, I can't see how it isn't "the less the merrier." Especially if 99.7% of particulates are being removed.

I don't own an ionic thingy and am not interested in owning one, but have read good things about HEPA units and understand they are used in some hospitals and research facilities. I'm not sure that we should write them off, particularly not based on what Cecil says.