Use these suggestions to remove air pollutants and manage humidity to ensure you breathe clean air at home. Because you spend so much time at home, it’s critical to consider the air quality in your living area. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), indoor air can be five times more contaminated than outdoor air, which can have significant health consequences. Mold, mildew, smoke, dust, and other allergens may lurk in your home’s air but are invisible to the naked eye. Long-term pollution exposure has been linked to asthma, other respiratory disorders, heart disease, and cancer. Fortunately, a few simple changes can help improve your indoor air quality and make your home cleaner and healthier.
How to Improve the Indoor Air Quality of Your Home
Indoor air quality depends on proper airflow, fresh air from outside, and ventilation. The first step is to recognize the indications of poor indoor air quality. Cooking scents, fogged mirrors and windows, moist rooms, clothes or towels, strong chemical odors after cleaning, and mold are the most prevalent indicators. Once you’ve found an air quality problem, please follow the following procedures to eliminate air pollutants at their source.
Keep Dust at Bay
Regular dusting and vacuuming can help reduce dust, pet dander, and other debris. Dust mite-proof mattress, pillow, and box spring covers. It is advised that bedding be washed in hot water at least once each week.
Make Use of Your Vent Fan
While bathing, always turn on your bathroom ventilation fan to prevent mold and mildew formation. Please turn it on 10 minutes before your shower and leave it on for 20 minutes afterward to effectively remove moisture from the air. Place a tissue near it if you need clarification on whether the fan works. If the fan is appropriately removing air, the paper will be drawn against the grill and remain there as long as the fan is turned on.
Cooking and Cleaning Should Be Done Healthily
While cooking, turn on your range’s ventilation hood to prevent smoke, excess moisture, and other pollutants from being released into the air. When using home cleaners, which often contain harsh chemicals that might circulate into the air, you should also turn on your range hood or open a window.
How to Use Household Appliances to Improve Air Quality
Specific equipment can also assist us in breathing easier indoors, but simply having an air filter does not guarantee that your home’s air quality is optimal. Mold, dust, and other allergens can build up in your air conditioner, humidifier, and air filter, contaminating the air you breathe. Here’s what you should know about keeping these devices clean, efficient, and effective. (Note: Because of the low humidity in desert areas, mold is usually not a concern.)
Cooling systems
They Do the Following: Anyone in a hot climate understands how vital air conditioning is in the summer. Air conditioners not only cool the air within your home but also remove moisture, making you feel less hot and sticky.
How to Effectively Use Them: Central air conditioning is usually the most efficient technique to cool down the entire house. However, remember that when temperatures are mild, your air conditioner may not run long enough to remove moisture from the air. Furthermore, a central air conditioner that is too powerful for the size of the house will swiftly cool the air but will need more time to remove moisture adequately. A window-mounted air conditioner is a less expensive solution for cooling a single room.
Because water condenses on the cooling coils of an air conditioner, it can be a source of mold.
Maintenance Advice: A heating, ventilation, and air conditioning specialist should service air conditioners, whether central or window, at the beginning of each season, so they can clean the coils and ensure they are not polluted.
Simply opening a window allows for air exchange. Still, it does nothing to filter out hazardous allergens or asthma triggers that may invade your home.
Filters for the Air
They Do the Following: Air filters eliminate irritants from the air, such as mold spores, pet dander, candle and cigarette soot, and even skin cells, making it easier to breathe, especially for allergy sufferers. Simply opening a window allows for air exchange. Still, it does nothing to filter out hazardous allergens or asthma triggers that may invade your home. A filtered ventilator is the most effective way to bring fresh air indoors while exhausting polluted air outdoors.
How to Effectively Use Them: High-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters are often more expensive than ionic filters but are more effective at eliminating all airborne particles. The best technique to filter air for the entire house is to utilize a furnace filter. (In arid areas, the filter may be connected to an air conditioner as part of an electric heat pump.) Keep the system’s fan going even if the heat is turned off to allow the filter to do its job.
Some air filters produce ozone. Ozone oxidizes the compounds that cause odors, making the air smell fresh, but it does not eradicate them. Because ozone can be irritating, avoiding ozone-producing gadgets (most are labeled on the package) is advised.
Maintenance Tips: HEPA filters become clogged over time and must be replaced. The frequency with which they must be replaced is determined by the level of contamination in the air. The manufacturer’s instructions should be followed when cleaning electrostatic filters (some contain sections that can be hosed off or wiped off, while others utilize disposable filters).
Additional Advice: Don’t rely on your air filter to avoid mold allergies. Mold will grow wherever there is water. The best method is to remove the mold source (such as a leak or damaged drywall) and then use a diluted bleach solution to eliminate the mold spores.
Purifiers of the Air
They Do the Following: Air purifiers, like air filters, sterilize the air by removing impurities that produce odors or make us sick. These stand-alone units have a filter to trap dust and other allergens and a fan to circulate clean air back into the space. Some people also use ultraviolet light to capture and kill airborne diseases like germs and mold.
How to Effectively Use Them: Air purifiers are most effective in tiny, contained rooms and are ineffective in improving air quality throughout a home.
Check the package before purchasing an air purifier to verify it does not produce ozone, which can harm your health.
Upkeep Advice: Just like with air filters, you should regularly clean or change your air purifier’s filter according to the manufacturer’s instructions.
Humidifiers
What they do: Do you get an electric shock when you walk on your carpet? Those sparks indicate that your home’s humidity level is too low. A humidifier can help by providing moisture to the air.
How to Effectively Use Them: Most people use stand-alone humidifiers to add moisture to different rooms, which is acceptable if you don’t have access to a furnace-mounted unit. However, we believe that the most effective technique to humidify the entire house is an evaporative model that may be installed in your central furnace. You may need to leave the fan on even when the heat is turned off to give the humidifier adequate time to perform successfully.
Humidifiers can release bacteria and mold into the air if not cleaned regularly. Follow the directions for cleaning a humidifier and refill it with fresh water daily.
Maintenance Tips: A diluted bleach solution is the best technique to disinfect and deep-clean humidifiers. Refer to the manufacturer’s instructions for more information.
Additional suggestions: 30% and 50% humidity are ideal for your home. Outside that range, mold, dust mites, and other air pollutants thrive, and our bodies natural immune systems can be compromised when the air becomes too dry. A digital humidity meter, which can be obtained cheaply at most home improvement stores, is a straightforward way to measure interior humidity levels.