4 Ways to Improve Indoor Air Quality in Your Home or Business
Posted in Air Quality, on July 13, 2018
Your indoor spaces are one of the important environments that you live in - because we spend so much of our time indoors, it’s important to improve indoor air quality in your home or business to maintain good health and be at your best. It’s not hard to improve indoor air quality in your home or business - small changes can have huge affects on your allergies, overall health, mood, and even your personality.
Poor indoor air quality often has such subtle warning signs that it’s difficult to tell it apart from other common irritants, like seasonal allergies or outdoor pollution. But pollution in our indoor environments can have an outsized effect, leading to difficulties with memory, more frequent colds and flus, increased asthma attacks, and even an increased risk for heart and lung diseases later in life. Paying close attention to your indoor air quality now pays off down the road - especially for women and children, who spend the most time indoors and so are especially affected by poor indoor air quality.
There are 4 easy ways you can improve indoor air quality in your home or business for little or no money and time that we’re going to share today on the blog. While these make a good step to improving indoor air quality, if you’re really concerned, nothing beats an indoor air quality assessment - but more on that later.
Improving Your Indoor Air Quality with Plants
While it may sound more granola than you’re used to, plants can actually markedly improve indoor air quality in your home or business - and we know this because NASA studied it in the 1980s when looking to clean the air quality inside space stations!
The results of this study found that a number of common indoor house plants can provide air filtering and cleaning benefits inside your home. For a complete list of 8 plants that will improve your indoor air quality, read our post about it from April to learn more, but for now, our top three favourites are:
- Spider plant: NASA discovered that spider plants removed up to 95% of indoor air toxins within the first 24 hours of exposure, making them a fantastic (and beautiful) part of your indoor air cleaning regimen.
- Ficus: There are a number of different Ficus species, but they’ve been found to excel at removing benzene and trichloroethylene from indoor air.
- Mother-in-Law’s Tongue/Snake Plant: This hard to kill plant only needs a little water and indirect light to do its work soaking up formaldehyde, benzene and trichloroethylene from your indoor environment.
Get Rid of Dust!
Dust is definitely a chore that could easily take up an hour or more of our time per week and keeping on top of it can sometimes feel impossible. Dust is comprised of a number of small particles: dried skin, pet dander, textile fibres, food, pollen, mold spores, bacteria, construction materials, and more.
Dust can accumulate in our homes for a number of reasons - living on a busy street or near an industrial area, for example, will increase certain types of dust particles in your home. Having carpets or thick drapes, ruffled textiles, and lots of upholstery can also increase your dust levels, as those particles easily become trapped within the cloth.
If your indoor environment is especially dusty, it can cause a lot of trouble for those with respiratory diseases or ailments, and can increase allergy symptoms. To improve indoor air quality in your home or business by getting rid of dust, vacuuming and regular cleaning are certainly the obvious solutions, but sometimes you need a bit of extra assistance - which is where HEPA filtration and our next indoor air quality improvement tip can help…
Maintain Your HVAC
One of the best ways to improve indoor air quality in your home or business is to regularly maintain your HVAC system. Your furnace or air conditioner play a huge part in moving air around your home, and if they’re not working correctly or moving pollution from room to room, they could be contributing or exacerbating an existing air quality problem.
The first question we always ask is: when was the last time you changed your filters? All furnaces have a slot for a removable filter; this filter should be replaced every 3 - 5 months to help catch and remove fine particles from the air. Cleaning or replacing this filter regularly not only means you’re eliminating allergens, but that you’re also keeping the interior of your furnace clean.
If you extend the view of your HVAC system to the outdoors, keeping your air conditioner unit free of debris and well maintained also has a huge effect on your indoor air quality. Make sure any ventilation ducts are open and uncovered by leaves, sticks, or materials to ensure that fresh, clean air has an easy passage into your home.
Open Your Windows
Our last tip to improve indoor air quality in your home or business is possibly the easiest of them all - open your windows! Now that summer is here this is especially easy, but opening your windows can help flush out old, stale air laden with pollutants, dust and other particles. Fresh air not only makes us feel better, but it can also helps get things moving - in every home there are spaces where air movement is minimal, like the basement. When there’s a lack of air flow, there are also often mold problems, so getting the air moving around your home can do more than add a fresh scent.
Improving Your Indoor Air
As you can see, it’s not hard to improve indoor air quality in your home or business - no special skills or training are required. For those persistent problems or when something more serious is affecting you, the best solution is to have a professional come in and do an air quality assessment. At SafeAir, we have years of experience performing residential and commercial indoor air quality assessments and have aided hundreds of clients in improving their indoor air quality for better heath and wellness. If you’re curious about the indoor air quality in your home or business, give us a call and we’d be more than happy to walk you through our indoor air assessment process and help you improve indoor air quality in your home or business