Indoor air pollution is a serious problem, especially during cooler months when your home may be completely closed up for long stretches. The resulting buildup of pollutants can lead to air that’s as much as five times as polluted as the air outside your door. The importance of residential indoor air quality testing cannot be overstated when it comes to the health of your family and the livability of your home.
Living an Indoor Life with Good Residential Indoor Air Quality
Residential indoor air quality is so important simply because you spend nearly all of your life indoors, whether at home, school, or work. Unless you’re one of the lucky few who can count the great outdoors as their place of employment, you likely spend about 90% of your time inside one building or another. This means that roughly three-quarters of all the pollutants you are exposed to during your lifetime will typically be the result of poor indoor air quality. Your home, wherein you probably feel the most safe and secure, may actually be negatively impacting your health and the health of your family.
The most common culprits when it comes to poor residential indoor air quality include:
- Mold – Indoor air quality often suffers when a leak goes undetected in your home. Leaks that are not promptly and properly repaired can lead to the growth of harmful mold and mildew. Mold and mildew spores can easily get into the air in your home through the ventilation system or by spreading through the walls. You may notice a musty odor when mold has become a big problem, but the particulate matter released from mold can cause allergic reactions and other health issues even before it’s bad enough to smell. Some types of mold are particularly dangerous, and emit VOCs, or volatile organic compounds.
- Chemicals and Particulates – The furnishings and other items in your home may be a significant contributor to indoor air pollution. This is due in large part to the materials that comprise furniture, carpeting, and other common indoor products and building materials. All of these items can emit chemical compounds, VOCs, and small particulate matter into the air inside your home, resulting in health issues that range from slight headaches, irritated eyes and nasal passages, to chronic debilitating illnesses. Everyday dirt can also cause particulate pollution in your home, giving rise to asthma and other respiratory ailments.
- Improper Ventilation – Most homes aren’t built to easily allow the exchange of outside air with inside air. This is due to a variety of reasons, but mostly it’s because of temperature control. Air conditioned air being replaced with outside air during the summer, for example, would lead to extremely high cooling costs. The answer has traditionally been to forego easy exchanges for more efficient heating and cooling. While the lower cost of heating and cooling is an excellent benefit, the negative impact on indoor air quality tends to be overlooked.
Because there are so many common culprits when it comes to indoor air pollution, it’s important to keep abreast of the air quality in your home through residential indoor air quality testing. This type of testing can help you determine where the pollution is coming from in your home, and give you a concrete place to start in trying to improve the air quality in your home. Residential indoor air quality can be one of the biggest factors affecting your health, and you may not even know it. Take the necessary steps to protect your home and family by getting your home’s air quality tested today.
For over 20 years, we have been helping people who are working on improving indoor air quality with Indoor Environmental Surveys and Ventilation Systems Cleaning by providing high quality workmanship with unparalleled customer service to both residential and commercial customers. Our staff of professionals are dedicated to serving your specific needs from the moment you contact us until the completion of your remediation project. Visit our website or contact us today for more information or to schedule your mold remediation consultation.
