ARTICLE
What You Need To Know About Your Indoor Air- Author: Andrew Pasquella
You may suspect some indoor air pollution as outdoor air pollution that comes in through your windows and doors and in some cases you’d be right, but where does the rest come from? Everyday items you have in your home and office can off-gas chemicals contributing to the poor air quality. The items can range from the more obvious like tobacco smoke and dust to the less likely like appliances, paints, carpets, furniture which can contain formaldehyde and flame retardants, fax machines, printers, copiers, candles, and even the building materials themselves. It’s surprising isn’t it? You would think there would be some sort of legislation or methodologies in place to protect us from purchasing and living with harmful chemicals. There are eighty thousand chemical substances that are used in industry and of this eighty thousand guess how many have actually been studied for their effects on living organisms? Three thousand. Sure some chemicals have been banned by the U.S. because of the hazards they pose but many of theses chemicals are sitting in your home right now anyway. We’re living in a time of a global economy where manufactures get their parts and pieces from all over the world to create one product. Places where the use of many of the banned chemicals here is everyday practice there. And no, manufacturers are not required to know what is exactly in the parts that they’re sourcing elsewhere. It’s scary business. Not only is it scary but it’s frustrating. Many new homes and office buildings are more airtight than ever in an effort to become more energy efficient and that only compounds the indoor air quality problem because less fresh air can get in and more harmful chemicals are concentrated in your living and working space. So what can you do? First, buy an air purifier that uses a HEPA filter or buy a few to place throughout your home or business. We have a good one that Honeywell makes in our bedroom. We also switched out the filter for our central heat and air and bought a Filtrite filter that 3M makes. Within a day of running each we noticed a huge difference. Make sure your ducts are cleaned every once and awhile, even with a filter they can collect toxins over time. Try to buy natural or organic furnishings and carpeting. There’s been an explosion recently of “green” and organic home furnishing stores. Some of the more readily available and granted, cheaper, furniture out there is made form particleboard which releases formaldehyde a very toxic chemical. Many of the chemicals used to treat the fabrics on your upholstery are off-gassed and absorbed by your skin and lungs. Put plants in your home! Trees and plants are our planet’s lungs and can help reduce the pollution in your home not to mention they give of fresh oxygen. For those of you living in large cities or if you have a long commute it would also be beneficial to use a small personal air cleaner in your car. You can buy a plug converter that will work with your lighter plug in your car. A new study done by USC found that up to half of a Los Angeles resident’s exposure to to harmful air pollution occurs while we’re in our vehicles. If you’re like me and thought that having the windows up and running the air on recirculate beat the pollution well, bad news. The research team found only “modest’ reduction of particulate exposure and just about no reduction of most gaseous pollutants. Obviously it’s a good idea to do your best to improve the air you’re breathing and exposed to and those are some easy solutions to get you on your way. Using natural and organic cleaners in your home will also help and again there are more options out there right now than ever before. It’s easy to get discouraged when you begin to learn how toxic our bodies and world can and have become. Luckily there are easy and effective choices you can make today to fight back. You might feel overwhelmed by all of the information and by all of the changes and choices you can make. It’s our nature to get comfortable with what we know. We all start somewhere so start with one change and see how easy it is to incorporate in your life. I’ve found it can snowball fairly quickly when you see and feel the results. Source: The Detox Blog
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I’ve spent a great deal of time in highly polluted cities. Places like Mexico City where they have “pollution days” when they’re forced to close schools because of how bad the air pollution gets. Trust me, pollution days are not as fun as snow days. Los Angeles holds the title for the most polluted city in the United States. I love it here but believe me, you can tell. When you fly into these cities you go through a brown layer and you can immediately smell the fumes, pretty shocking. What’s even more shocking is that its been proven that the air quality inside your home, right now, is 2-5 times more polluted than the air outside and in some cases 100 times worse!
