Airflow, Air Quality, Mold And Your Health
The damage that poor air quality can cause
Poor air quality is created from a range of factors, including industrial pollution and car exhausts; sometimes, just being outside can feel constrictive. However, what many people don’t consider is the potential impact of air pollution in the home - but they should. Studies have shown that indoor air pollution is linked to millions of deaths worldwide every single year, whether from acute illness stemming from the issue or from long-term conditions that develop as a result of exposure. Ensuring your home is protected from poor indoor air quality requires a three-pronged approach, and that begins with understanding the risks.
Sources of pollution
Understanding how the home becomes polluted will help you in ensuring you tackle it. Indoor air quality is typically made worse by three distinct factors:
- Insulation - the ability of your home to keep out exterior pollutants and factors;
- The quality of materials used in the house decoration, furnishings and fittings;
- Your home’s state of ventilation and the cleanliness of the system.
As it happens, protecting your property from poor indoor air quality can be made possible through just a few key changes. Protecting your health by protecting air quality is made possible through looking at the structure of your home. With that done, maintaining it is straightforward.
Insulating the home
The outdoors carries with it a number of pollutants. Many cities, both in the USA and worldwide, are subjected to air pollution advisories that make even heading outdoors dangerous. While this is undoubtedly a benefit, it can also be a negative; as the EPA notes, there’s a fine line to be walked between over and under insulating your property. After all, you need fresh air to help clean out your indoor air and enable airflow.
This is accomplished through insulation. Check the seals on your windows and doors; invest in better quality glazing if you have a lot of air coming through the window seals. Make sure you clean, too. Penn Jersey offer glass and window cleaning and it’s more important than just a visual thing - it will prevent pollution buildup in areas of airflow, preventing it from entering your house. This gives you control - and then, during times of low exterior pollution, you can let the air in to flow.
Cleaning the home
Many older housing materials were created with high levels of degradable materials and volatile organic compounds (VOCs). The stains, paints, treatments and products that keep furniture and the walls looking good will degrade over time, and that goes into the internal atmosphere of the home. Using good-quality modern materials, and cleaning frequently - to remove residue from the home - is crucial; it will stop any notable amount of VOCs building up.
Ventilation and duct systems
Key to the ventilation of a home is a good quality duct system. That can be from air bricks and crawl space within the home, through to bespoke filtration and HVAC systems to help circulate air around the home. Both come with their own problems that require care to remain effective.
The former, duct systems, can easily accumulate filth and dirt. They are neglected areas of the home, but consider the amount of cleaning you conduct within your property - all of that dirt that you remove elsewhere will inevitably be building up in the hidden areas of the home. At Penn Jersey, duct cleaning service remedies this - it removes pollutants, mold and VOCs that build up in ducts, to prevent them being pushed around the home. That’s crucial to enabling good quality air quality in older homes, or those without HVAC systems.
HVAC and filtration
HVAC systems, and air conditioners, bring their own risks. They introduce an inherent level of moisture into the home, as a necessary function of their operation, and that increases the risk of certain risks. Increased humidity can have an impact on respiratory conditions, such as asthma, and it can also encourage the growth of mold.
Mold appears particularly in humid, cold and windy areas. HVACs, despite being a way to filtrate and clean the air, are also the perfect breeding ground for mold. If they take hold in the device, in its fins, fans or the radiator, it can start directly blowing spores around the home. As a result, it’s important to have professional HVAC cleaning on a regular basis. This is even more relevant if you have a full HVAC system, with ventilation ducts and a multi-room system, and will necessitate regular.
Insulating your home will ensure air can come in while pollutants stay out. Regular cleaning, to remove pollutants from the airflow and system of your home, will give you total control over everything within your environment. Having control is the most essential part of keeping indoor air quality at a proper level, and making your home a pleasant one to live in.
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