Here’s a newsflash for you: staying cooped up in your apartment won’t spare you from air pollution. In fact, there are harmful pollutants present in your own home that you might not even know about.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), every year, there are over four million people who succumb to fatal diseases due to exposure to indoor air pollution.
Individuals, especially the young ones, who spend most of their time at home are more susceptible to cardiovascular and pulmonary illnesses.
So, with 87% of human life spent staying indoors, it’s important to ensure that the air you breathe at home is safe and clean.
To help you in your quest to achieve excellent air quality, here are four practical tips you can follow.
Blow Off the Nasty
Aside from your portable smoothie blender, customized bamboo chopping board, and single-serve coffee maker, you need one thing more in your kitchen-an exhaust fan.
It’s truly a joy to rustle up a delicious bowl of seafood chowder or a plate of smoky braised brisket every morning.
However, you might not be aware that too much cooking can compromise the quality of air in your kitchen.
Your cooking stove produces certain levels of carbon monoxide.
When you use gas stoves, water heaters, generators, and fireplaces with the same frequency, you’re increasing the amount of carbon monoxide released into the air.
Without a proper ventilation system in place, this can be quite dangerous for you and your family.
Carbon monoxide can accumulate in your bloodstream when you inhale large doses.
When carbon monoxide builds up in your system, your body won’t get the sufficient amount of oxygen that it needs.
This can cause nausea, headache, impaired vision, heart problems, cerebral damage, and even death.
To maintain the right quality of air in your kitchen, install exhaust fans that could reduce the levels of carbon monoxide produced by your appliances.
You can also install carbon monoxide detectors around your house to strictly monitor the air quality in your house.
When it comes to your health and safety, there’s nothing wrong with being a little cautious.
Sift Out the Dirt
Because of the lack of airflow and circulation, indoor pollution is five times worse than outdoor pollution.
So, if you want to completely sift out harmful airborne particles from your house, it’s best to buy yourself a trusty air purifier.
This machine gets rid of bacteria, dust, and pollen present in your household, maintaining the right quality of air for you and your family.
Air purifiers can also filter out nasty chemicals such as chlorine, ammonia, and phthalate that are produced from using cleaning products.
It can even work to eliminate the horrible stench inside your household that you always complain about. It can suck in that foul odor and replace it with fresh air in a jiffy.
Don’t Forget to Look Up
You might not be aware of the fact that mold and bacteria can pervade through your dirty air ducts.
If your ductwork is not regularly maintained, you’ll be breathing contaminated air 24/7.
Uncleaned ducts can cause health issues such as allergies and asthma.
If you don’t want to catch those respiratory problems, you should make cleaning your vent your top priority.
Regularly disinfecting them will surely eliminate potential airborne pollutants, and it will help you get rid of the funky smell often expelled by your air ducts.
Aside from that, habitual cleaning can also extend the life of your vent system, which will save you from a lot of troubles in the future.
Of course, you don’t have to do it yourself because you can hire experts to conduct frequent inspections and intense cleaning.
If it means breathing clean air every minute of every day, then it would be worth every penny.
Start from the Bottom
You shouldn’t only be keeping it clean up there but also down there.
To reduce airborne pollutants indoors, you have to maintain the cleanliness of your carpet.
Your carpet collects all the dust and dirt in your household.
You don’t know the number of bacteria thriving in between its fibers.
From pollen to mites, your carpet is a catch basin of every nasty thing imaginable to mankind.
So, by vacuuming your carpet once or twice a week, you can get rid of particles that might compromise the quality of air in your house.
If you want to avoid constant sneezing and allergic reactions whenever you’re at home, then it’s about time you bring out your vacuum cleaner.
But if you want to conduct an intense disinfecting of your carpet, some companies offer cleaning services, from dry powder cleaning to hot water extraction to steam cleaning.
If you let the experts do it for you, you’ll be breathing in clean air in no time.
If we don’t put importance on the quality of the air we breathe, we are only putting ourselves in danger.
So, if you want to live a long and healthy life, start at home.