Good day,
could you change the machines so that they only work, i.e. consume filters, when there is also pollution?

Or to not upset those who prefer the current operating principle, that you set up an option that gives the possibility to switch between the two modes?

I mean, as long as there is no pollution, a filter can not get dirty or sealed.

If you have a piece of code to add, I would be happy to use it.
then, for areas with low pollution density, use machine 1
Alternatively, the switch on a power pole.

You can even push it all with this mod, which allows you to have a logistic value if there is pollution or not.
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/pollution-detector

I can't tell you how it works though.

Unfortunately, I do not have it. =(

The pollution detector is not bad and also easy to use, if you could connect it directly to the filter machine I would be satisfied, but unfortunately this is not possible, so you are forced to connect it to a power switch and I do not like this solution at all.

So I thought, maybe I can manage to integrate the function of this detector directly into the filter machine, but for this I lack by far the knowledge to program a mod.

Then I had the idea to adapt the recipe for air purification, which is used in the filter machine, so that pollution is needed as an ingredient in addition to the filter, as it is also the case in the mod better air purification (Which I don't want to use because I don't like several things about this one).
But so that the machine understands pollution as an ingredient, it requires further adjustments, which I suspect in the control.lua and there my understanding then unfortunately again meets its limits.

Nevertheless, thanks for your quick response and the tip with the pollution detector.

If you want to hurt yourself, look at the hivemind source code which uses pollution in the chunk to generate bitter.