Your home’s indoor air quality (or IAQ) affects both your health and comfort. There are plenty of pollutants that can infiltrate your air without you even knowing it! Luckily, if you gain knowledge of these pollutants and their causes, you can better control your indoor air quality.
How Indoor Air Quality Affects Your Health
Side effects from air pollutants can be immediate or happen years down the line. Whether you’ve been exposed once or multiple times, you can be affected by poor IAQ.
Age and preexisting medical conditions can alter the severity of your reaction. If you have a condition such as asthma, you might feel extra sensitive to bad indoor air quality. Even without any conditions, some people are more sensitive to IAQ than others.
Some immediate side effects include fatigue, headaches, eye, nose, and throat irritation, and dizziness. Long-term exposure could lead to respiratory and heart diseases, and even cancer. The length of exposure and concentration of pollutants that causes more severe diseases is still unknown.
If you can find and stop the pollutant that’s causing your ailments, that’s one of the best ways to treat symptoms. Even if you aren’t feeling under the weather, it’s imperative to give your IAQ a checkup to ensure it’s safe for you.
How Do I Know if I Have Poor IAQ?
One way to tell if you have poor indoor air quality is by monitoring your symptoms. If they go away when you leave the area with poor IAQ and return when you come back, it may be a sign.
Another clue that your air quality might not be the best is if you have any indoor pollutant sources. These include:
- Tobacco products (ex. cigarette smoke)
- Fuel-burning combustion appliances (ex. fireplaces, wood-burning stoves, gas ovens, furnaces)
- Furnishings or materials emitting VOCs like fresh paint or varnish
- Harsh household cleaning products
- A too-moist environment
- Radon or any other pollutant coming from outside
- Mold or pests
These, along with others, may be compromising your air quality. Some are easy to detect and fix, while others, such as radon, require a professional’s help.
How To Improve Your Indoor Air Quality
Eliminating pollutant sources wherever possible is very effective for improving indoor air quality. Minimizing clutter, avoiding smoking, eliminating molds and removing carpeting can all help.
Effects of poor IAQ are aggravated by lower ventilation. Letting more fresh air inside is a great way to prevent pollutants from accumulating.
This can be done by opening windows or doors. You can also run your air conditioner with open vent control. Kitchen and bathroom fans that exhaust outside also aid in the removal of pollutants.
Always change or clean the filters on your heating and cooling systems regularly. If you neglect this, contaminants won’t be effectively filtered from the air. Dirty filters mess with the efficiency of your HVAC systems, so always keep them tidy.
High heat and humidity is another pollutant trap. The EPA’s recommended humidity level is 30-50%. High air moisture can make air pollutants more concentrated and cause things like mold to grow in your home (yuck!). Humidity can happen for a multitude of reasons, including a damaged or leaky roof.
The best way to combat moisture and climate issues in your home is to check up on your roof and your HVAC systems. There are systems you can install that make air quality control much easier. Mitsubishi ductless mini-splits, for example, control humidity, use environmentally friendly refrigerant, and inhibit contaminants from the air with a 10-year filter.
In addition, air ionization can remove pollutants, cleaning up the air you breathe. The iWave product line uses ions to reduce bacteria, gases, VOCs, smoke, and more. The ions created by Nu-Calgon systems are the same as nature’s ions from water and lightning, for example. This is one way to bring the benefits of nature inside your home.
Expert Installation Leads to Better IAQ
Whether it’s your boiler, AC, furnace, or anything else in your home, a certified professional’s installation is vital. Installation mistakes can hurt indoor air quality, so it’s important to build a relationship with a trusted service so you get expert installations and can easily fix issues with great communication.
Live Free Heating Cooling Electric knows the importance of your indoor air quality, and how great HVAC services help to achieve that. We offer free estimates (terms apply) so you can start improving both your air quality and quality of life today!