A Breath of Fresh Air: How to improve our indoor air quality

In this chapter Coulthard examines the relationship between fresh air and health.

Intuitively, it would make sense that fresh air could be beneficial to health; especially for breathing conditions such as asthma and pneumonia.

Additionally, Coulthard highlghts impacts on

• Fatigue,

• Diabetes, and 

• Heart disease. 

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For those of us who live in the country, fresh air might just be outside, but what if you live in a city?

Most of us have seen those images on TV of large cities being choked by smog.

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So which is worse?

Coulthard cites research from the Royal College of Physicians that says that pollutants indoors can be up to 100x worse than outdoors. This is pretty bad considering we spend most of our time indoors, these days.

How do we bring fresh air indoors?

Reduce and Remove

The first step is to stop polluting the air indoors. There is not use cleaning the air if things in our homes are still releasing toxins.

Coulthard suggests we do this by minimising thigns that release chemical vapours such as:

• Chemical air freshners,

• Strong chemical cleaning products,

• Hairsprays,

• High volatile organic compound (VOC) paints, lacquers and varnishes,

• Plywood and MDF (due to high formaldehyde),

• Gas,

• Parrafin, and

• Coal.

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Ventilate

Once we reuce and remove, we can work on getting more fresh air in.

Coulthard outlines three ways of doing this.

Natural Ventilation

• This involves opening

• Doors,

• Window, and

• Skylights.

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Mechanical Ventilation

• This involve the use of systems such as

• In-built ventilation systems, and

• Extraction fans.

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Natural Infiltration

We often don’t think about it but our homes have lots of tiny little gaps where air naturally comes in. This includes

• Gaps,

• Chimney flues, and

• Cracks.

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Clean

The third, and last, method is to clean the air.

Coulthard suggests 5 ways for us to do this

1.     Find out what is causing the problem. 

a.     Air quality testing kits might help.

2.     Get a vacuum cleaner with a HEPA filter.

3.     Vacuum regularly or switch to hard floors.

4.     Use air filtering plants (more on this another time).

5.     Consider an air purifier or filter.

a.     These vary in how effective they are but Coulthard suggests we look for 4 things.

                                               i.     A good quality HEPA filter.

                                             ii.     An activated carbon filter (which removes traffic gases)

                                            iii.     The room size it is recommended for.

                                            iv.     How many air exchanges it can do every hour.

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Conclusion

Air quality has a big impact on our health. Indoor health quality can be improved by removing sources of pollutants from indoors, mechanical ventilation, natural infiltration and cleaning our indoor air. Next week we will look how plants can help us to that.