The Airborne Threats Inside Your Home

There is an oft quoted statistic that indoor air is 40-100 times more polluted than outdoor sir in a non smoking house and up 400 times more polluted in a smoking house.  There are also a bunch of disease stats that show how prevalent lung conditions are and how they are increasing.

The point of all this is that your air sucks.  And you should do something about it.

But do you even know what it is that you should be concerned with? What is it exactly that makes indoor air so bad?

First, you have biological contaminants.

Your house is warm, wet enough and has food for a whole bunch of things.  But there are 2 in particular that warrant special mention, and they are responsible for the majority of respiratory conditions.

The first things are dust mites.  These little critters are all over the place, and they feed on the #1 component of household dust – flaked off skin cells.  While they have decent populations on pretty much every surface in the home, they are especially prevalent on soft, upholstered surfaces and things covered in fabric. The number one place being in your bed.

While the mites themselves are bad, it’s actually their feces that cause the problem.  They cause a host of reactions in people, and are the second leading cause of allergies (the first being genetic predisposition). So you have to keep the mite feces out of your air.

More on dust mites – http://healthandenergy.com/dust_mites.htm

Second is mold.

This is nasty stuff, and it gets a foothold when your air is too humid.  Once established it releases microscopic spores into the air, and if you breathe enough of them you can get an exotic fungal infection in your lungs.

That is bad…very, very, bad.  Mold is such a threat that if there is enough of it in your home you are not allowed to remove it on your own – specialists with gear have to be called in.  It’s not something to take lightly.

More on mold – http://www.mouldfacts.ca/

Next, we move on to chemicals.

Even if you don’t smoke there are a bunch of things slowly off gassing a host of potent carcinogens into your homes’ air.

There are a ton of these, so I’ll only go over a couple of the most common.

Formaldehyde is probably the most common. This is embalming fluid, and it is used as a preservative.  With many goods facing long delays between the time they are manufactured and the time they end up in the consumer’s house they have to maintain their “newness” for quite some time.  Enter formaldehyde.  Not only does it preserve a good in its’ freshly made condition, it is a huge deterrent to pests which might otherwise snack on it.

It makes you wonder when even insects are smart enough to steer clear of something.

More on formaldehyde – http://www.arb.ca.gov/research/indoor/formaldehyde.htm

The second are flame retardants.  These are known as PBDEs and are extremely toxic.  If you’ve ever been in a department store and all of a sudden felt nauseous it was due to these.

Now, they are in there for a reason.  I don’t think anyone would choose to have flammable over non flammable goods in their home.  But those flame retardants are slowly wafting throughout your home and into your lungs – and they eventually end up in your body fat.  These are also extremely carcinogenic.

There are many, many others.  But I think you get the point.  There are very high concentrations of chemicals in your home.

More on flame retardants – http://www.cleanandhealthyme.org/BodyofEvidenceReport/TheChemicals/PDBEsToxicFlameRetardants/tabid/97/Default.aspx

The last thing is particles smaller than 2.5 microns.

These could be made up of almost anything – drywall dust, household dust, particles from incomplete combustion, etc… They are dangerous because they have the ability to penetrate deep into the lungs, lodge in there and cause extensive scarring and other problems.

Interestingly, it doesn’t really matter what the particle is made up of – only that it initiates an immune response in the lungs.  Some, like asbestos, are hard to degrade and lead to big problems down the road.  But none of these particles are good for you.

The reaction is similar to have a splinter –redness and swelling, etc…but you can pull these guys out.  So it’s best to avoid them in the first place.

So those are three things that you should watch out for in your indoor air.  It’s time to make sure you are breathing the cleanest air possible.  Because the time to protect your health is when you have it. I’ll resist the urge to spout off a bunch of cliches.