9 Quick Ways to Improve the Air Quality in Your home

9 Quick Ways to Improve the Air Quality in Your home

By Ruth MacEachern

Product Manager

Did you know that the air inside your home could be more polluted than the air outside? Poor indoor air quality is a silent threat that can have serious health consequences. Let’s explore the hidden dangers and how you can protect yourself and your loved ones.

The Health Risks

Breathing in polluted indoor air can lead to a range of health issues. Short-term exposure can cause irritation of the eyes, nose, and throat, headaches, dizziness, and fatigue1. Long-term exposure is even more concerning, as it can contribute to respiratory diseases, heart disease, and even cancer1.

Common pollutants that affect indoor air quality

Indoor air pollution comes from various sources. Here are some common culprits:

• Heating and Cooking: Gas cookers and open fires can release harmful particles and gases like nitrogen dioxide.
• Damp and Mould: Poor ventilation and moisture from activities like cooking and drying clothes indoors can lead to damp and mould, which are harmful to your lungs.
• Chemicals: Cleaning products, paints, and certain types of furniture release volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that can affect your health.
• Tobacco Smoke: Exposure to tobacco smoke indoors is particularly dangerous, especially for children and those with pre-existing health conditions.

Who’s at Risk?

While everyone can be affected by poor indoor air quality, certain groups are more vulnerable:

• Children and Pregnant Women: Developing bodies are more susceptible to pollutants.
• Elderly: Older adults may have weaker immune systems and pre-existing health conditions.
• People with Respiratory Conditions: Those with asthma, COPD, or allergies are at higher risk.

9 ways you can improve the air quality in your home

Here are some practical steps you can take to improve the air quality in your home:

1. Ventilate: Open windows regularly to allow fresh air to circulate.
2. Use Extractor Fans: In kitchens and bathrooms, use exhaust fans to remove moisture and pollutants.
3. Avoid Smoking Indoors: Keep your home smoke-free to protect everyone’s health.
4. Choose Low-VOC Products: Opt for paints, cleaning products, and furniture that emit fewer harmful chemicals   
5. Monitor Air Quality: Consider using air quality monitors to keep track of pollutant levels and humidity in your home.
6. Leave Space Around Furniture:  If large items of furniture such as wardrobes are positioned up against exterior walls, it will create pockets where dust and mould can build up quickly.  Leaving a 2-inch gap between furniture and walls allows air to circulate through a room more easily and helps to stop mould from building up#
7. Replace Carpets in Wet Rooms with Hard Floors: Carpets can add a touch of luxury to your bathroom but are a bad idea.  The high levels of moisture in bathrooms means that carpets can become saturated which creates the perfect environment for dust mites to thrive.
8. Try and Keep Temperatures Consistent: Maintaining consistent temperatures throughout your home helps to prevent cold spots where condensation can form, and if you combine even temperatures with good airflow, it can even make your home heating more efficient.
9. Consider a Whole House Ventilation System: In average households of four people, day to day activity including bathing and cooking can release add more than 60 litres of moisture into the air.

Without good airflow in all rooms, moisture can build up and cause condensation.  While extractor fans are helpful in dealing with humidity in a single room such as a bathroom or kitchen, a whole house solution will handle moist air throughout your home.

PIV systems such as ATMOS work by drawing in clean, filtered air from outside the building and gently ventilating the home from a central unit.  PIV systems replace the moisture laden air and control humidity between 45% and 60% providing air quality benefits that you’ll notice immediately.

Find Out More

If you have found damp or mould patches in your home and are worried about whether this could be a health risk or cause damage to your property, we can help.  Book your free home survey from our local ventilation specialist.  They will be able to identify the causes of condensation damp in your home and provide you with advice about the best way to get rid of the problem for good.

Simply enter your postcode below to find your local ventilation expert