Humans spend the majority of their time indoors. Indoor air quality is closely linked to your health and happiness. Breathable air that is free of health-threatening contaminants can contribute to a greater quality of life, a decreased risk of respiratory conditions, and a lower chance of developing a variety of chronic diseases.
Indoor air quality is also responsible largely for getting good amount of sleep according to several researches. People are likely to fall asleep faster in bedrooms with pleasant temperatures and good air quality.
So it makes perfect sense that you need to improve indoor air quality in order to improve the quality of your life and your health. But what is affecting your indoor air quality and how you can improve it? We have a complete guide structured for you, let’s get right into it.
Poor indoor air quality symptoms:
Several people believe that the best way to prevent air pollution is to stay indoors. But what if we told you that your indoor air quality can be worse than the pollution outside?
There are several signs indicating that you have a poor indoor air quality, resulting in multiple health issues for you and your family. Indoor air pollution has symptoms that are comparable to the common cold or influenza. Itchy eyes, a runny nose, sneezing, coughing, dizziness, and exhaustion are some of the symptoms.
In worse cases, you can also develop more complex and long term health problems like asthma and other respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. With long term exposure to poor indoor air quality, you may also get increased risk of developing lungs cancer.
What causes poor indoor air quality:
The most alarming thing about indoor air pollution is that you cannot see it. It just keeps on developing and suddenly you start facing health issues. Here are some causes of poor indoor air quality:
Disinfectants and Cleaning Agents:
It is undeniably crucial to keep your house clean; but, the items we use are one of the most prominent sources of poor indoor air quality. Chemicals included in them can cause a number of health issues, such as headaches, asthma, and a variety of respiratory ailments.
Sprays like air fresheners, glass cleaners, and furniture sprays are equally dangerous, as you spray them they start circulating in the air you breathe.
Carpet fumes:
When a new carpet is laid, there’s a strong risk that formaldehyde, a chemical from the glue used to secure it and carpet’s vinyl backing may release. Small kids may have particular difficulty, as they spend their time closer to the carpet. This may be dangerous for at least few months of the installation and contribute to the indoor air quality.
Cigarette smoke:
Cigarette smoke specially second hand smoke is another major source of poor indoor air quality. The health issues that cigarette smoke causes in youngsters differ from those that it causes in adults. Respiratory and ear infections, asthma episodes are common in children due to breathing in second hand cigarette smoke. When adults are exposed to secondhand smoke, they are more likely to develop heart disease, stroke, and lung cancer.
PBB and PCB:
Polybrominated biphenyl (PBB) & Polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) are often present in a wide range of plastic-containing consumer items, including furniture, televisions, computer displays, and anything with plastic foam. Both of these compounds are used to help keep plastic from catching fire and they unfortunately, find their way into our home spaces.
Poor ventilation:
The mother of all indoor air quality problems is a lack of ventilation. By occasionally opening the windows in your home, you are enabling any dangerous toxins, allergies, and other pollutants that have accumulated in your home to be flushed out or diluted by the outside air.
Inadequate ventilation can raise indoor pollutant levels by failing to bring in enough outside air to dilute emissions from interior sources and failing to transport indoor air pollutants out of the house.
How to improve indoor air quality:
There are several ways to improve indoor air quality, let’s see what you can do about it:
Whole house Fan:
Whole house fans assist in preventing outside air pollution from becoming an interior air quality issue. Your wholehouse fan may improve indoor air quality without bringing in contaminants from outside if you use the correct filters.
Whole House Fans were created to bring fresh, clean air in from the outside, quickly replenishing the existing air in your house. In an era when people are spending more time indoors, it’s vital to eliminate the sources of poor indoor air quality in your house. Get a whole house fan on priority to make indoor air quality better and healthy.
Control humidity in your home:
You should always monitor indoor humidity with humidity monitor. Most of the times these are pre-installed in ACs, if yours’ doesn’t have one you can buy a humidity monitor solely for this purpose.
Buy some plants:
You should also consider having some plants indoors or even outdoors. Plants absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen, they also naturally increase the humidity, and they can passively absorb pollutants on the external surfaces of leaves and on the plant root-soil system. Hence naturally helping you in improving indoor air quality.
Air purifiers:
You should also consider investing in an air purifier with HVAC filters, they have been proven to reduce indoor air pollution.
Ventilation:
Ventilation is key to improving indoor air quality there’s no denying about that. We recommend specially using cooking vents at all time when the kitchen is being used.
Your kitchen range hood enhances air quality by extracting pollutants like smoke and grease with the help of a fan. Not just in kitchen, you should ensure proper ventilation in all parts of your house.
Taking Points:
The air you breathe in needs to be of best possible quality in order to keep you healthy and active. Thanks for reading this article we hope it helped you in learning the facts about indoor air quality and how you can improve it for your well being.
