The Cost of Indoor Air Pollution; How Clean is Your Air?

Most of the time, resources and regulations are applied to outdoor air pollution – as they should be. But who is policing the pollutants indoors? The simple answer – you should! And here’s why:

1. According to the EPA, indoor air is typically 2 – 5 times more saturated with substances than outside air.
2. The average human breathes 3400 gallons of air per day.
3. The most common indoor air pollutants are as follows:

• Dead human skin cells
• Dust
• Dust mites
• Pollen
• Carbon dioxide

The air we breathe can carry serious health consequences with it. 4.3 million people die globally each year from complications due to poor indoor air quality.

• 12% are due to pneumonia
• 34% from stroke
• 26% from ischemic heart disease
• 22% from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)
• 6% from lung cancer

The great news is that we have the power to improve indoor air quality. All you need is a little knowledge and the right tools. Ozone air purifiers were popular for a while, but we’ve since learned that ozone is harmful in high concentrations. Air scrubbing devices or filtering purifiers are a great option. There are also negative ion generating air purifiers that work differently than ozone to reduce the number of air-borne positively charged ions and contaminants.

Ultimately though, it’s a game of numbers and movement. Airborne contaminants that are not inhaled inevitably fall to surfaces where they can be removed. Simply put, cleaning your indoor surfaces & removing the particulate matter will greatly reduce the amount of indoor air-borne particulate. No matter what we do, we can’t destroy matter. We can only move it from one place to another. HEPA filtration on our vacuum cleaners, indoor house plants to “recycle” air and frequent cleaning of all interior surfaces work together to cut down on the volume of pollutants in our indoor air.

Sources:
https://www.epa.gov/indoor-air-quality-iaq
https://web.archive.org/web/20150226020851/http://www.clemson.edu/facilities/es/facts-about-indoor-air-quality.html