Choosing Better Environmental Products

How To Deal With An Indoor Air Quality Problem

16 December 2021 by Cassandra Welch

Indoor air quality is an important issue when you want to keep your family healthy. The air in your home becomes polluted by products you bring in your home, cleaning products you use, building materials, dampness that causes mold, radon, lead, asbestos, cigarette smoke, pollen, dust, and other allergens. If your home is sealed tightly and you don't use air purifiers, your indoor air could potentially be unhealthy to breathe on a daily basis. Here's how you can deal with this problem.

Work With An Indoor Air Quality Professional

The first step is to have an evaluation of your indoor air quality. This can be done through an assessment of your home and testing. It's possible to test for a variety of contaminants, such as radon, lead, asbestos, mold, and allergens. This can be done by taking samples from building materials in your home, taking swabs of surfaces, and collecting air samples.

Some tests give quick results, while others are sent to a lab to be analyzed. The results from indoor air quality testing help you understand the problems you have in your home and how serious they are.

Get Suggestions On How To Improve Air Quality

The steps you need to take to improve the quality of the air you breathe depend on the type of pollutants you have in your home. For instance, an air purifier won't help with radon. Radon needs to be vented out of your house. You may need to work with multiple contractors to address individual issues, such as venting radon and removing lead paint. However, you can use your HVAC system as a whole-house air purifier to deal with things like dust and allergens.

You may need to clean your HVAC and ducts first. Then you might need to add a dehumidifier to control mold or a high-quality filter to reduce allergens and dust.

Repeat The Testing To Check The Improvements

Once you've cleaned your home well to get rid of dust and allergens that have fallen out of the air and implemented air quality improvements, consider having repeat testing done. This verifies that your improvements are working and lets you know the current condition of your air quality. The tests might indicate you need to do further work.

For instance, pollutants can enter your home from the outside of your house. It's possible that contaminated soil near your foundation might be responsible for some of the problems, and if so, you might need to cover bare soil near your foundation and put rugs near your doors to trap lead dust and other contaminants that you bring in the house on your shoes.

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