With Canadians spending 80- 90% of their time indoors, according to the Lung Association, the issue of the safety of our home’s indoor air quality is important to consider.
Six Habits To Improve Indoor Air Quality
What are we breathing in every day? A cocktail of VOC’s, viruses, mould, and a lengthy list of chemicals that have serious impacts on our family’s health.
1. Open a window to bring fresh air into your home. Use a range hood when cooking and any other exhaust fans in bathrooms to remove air and scents.
2. Get rid of dust. Regularly use an HEPA filter vacuum, wash bedding and textiles in all rooms, and wipe down surfaces with a damp cloth such as microfiber. And please, open windows when you are cleaning, even when using eco-friendly products, the report will explain what a difference it will make to your health!
3. Reduce clutter, especially in bedrooms and baby’s nursery where many hours are spent. That’s less “stuff” to dust, less potential off-gassing, and less build-up of toxicities in the place where you spend hours sleeping and healing your body. Since children are still developing they are especially vulnerable to effects of indoor air pollution.
4. Leave shoes at the door of your home. Wearing them around the house tracks in chemicals which you breathe in and your children play on.
5. Keep your home pest free by emptying garbages, wiping counters, and storing food in tightly sealed (glass or stainless steel) containers.
6. Watch for signs of mould and water damage. Take care of the cause right away before it builds up and becomes a more serious problem which can harm your respiratory system.
Motivated to do more to make your home’s air quality the best it can be? Read this list of 31 more things you can do to breathe better at home by reducing indoor air pollution.
There are several house plants that clean the air naturally. For example the English Ivy cleans the air in your home, and there are studies that it can even remove feces from the air.
But what about your HVAC system? Cleaning your air ducts and regularly replacing your air filter?
Caring for your HVAC system is really important to for your indoor air quality. We are just focusing on those daily habits in this article though. We mention air filters at #21 in this post https://www.greenmomscollective.ca/improve-indoor-air-pollution/ I notice a big difference when switching the filters, do you?