How important is Indoor Air Quality?

The quality of air within a person’s household is without a doubt one of the most crucial things to maintain properly, but even in spite of this it seems that people often end up overlooking it. No matter how much someone spends time out of the home, there’s no debating the fact that most people spend a majority of their time indoors within their homes, which is why it’s essential to ensure that indoor air quality is maintained properly as pollution of this air can lead to a great deal of issues that might not be evident immediately, but can have effects that are lasting and significant.

Health Risks

First and foremost, it’s essential to highlight that a lot negative health effects that people experience can actually be due to the quality of the air within their homes. It’s estimated that millions of people die each year solely due to the result of long term indoor air pollution, and many common respiratory ailments have been connected to this as well. These issues consist of respiratory trouble, rashes, and headaches. A lot of people who experience symptoms of allergies might not even realize that their health issues are due to the poor quality of indoor air, so it pretty much goes without saying that the quality of the indoor air in our homes matters greatly and must be maintained properly in order to avoid these issues.

Types of Contaminants

Fortunately though, the quality of our indoor air is something that we can actually monitor, manage, and improve, but before we go into the specifics regarding this, it’s worth highlighting what actually classifies as good indoor air quality. Simply put, you can consider your indoor air to be in a good state if your home is well ventilated at all times and the air doesn’t consist of any potentially dangerous contaminants such as radon, carbon monoxide, methane, nitrogen dioxide, or mold spores. Having indoor humidity levels ranging between 30 to 65 percent also help contribute to maintaining good air quality indoors.

Testing for Air Quality

In order to test your air quality, you can actually utilize a variety of professional services that are dedicated for the sole purpose of aiding people in testing the quality of their air and assisting them in order to improve it. Nowadays, there are various kinds of sensors available utilized by professionals that not only detect contaminants within the air but can also measure the amount of particulate matter as well as the humidity fairly accurately, and once you’ve done these tests, you’ll be able to determine what needs to be done to improve your air quality.

Removing the Contaminants

Once you’ve had a professional indoor air quality test done, you will be able to pinpoint the issues that need to be eliminated in order to improve it. The same professional services that provide testing will also help you single out the sources causing the polluted air, and will provide various solutions. The solutions can often times be as simple as opening more windows to enable ventilation, investing in simple appliances such as air purifiers, or they can be a bit more complex, such as is the case if you have mold issues or radon that’s leeching indoors from under your home.

Ongoing Maintenance

Once you’ve eliminated any and all contaminants, it’s certainly recommended that you try and test it at regular intervals to ensure that it remains pure at all times. It’s also advised that you attempt to test it if you begin to notice changes within your home such as unfamiliar smells that keep on lingering.