With consumer awareness being the highest it has ever been these days, more and more people are being proactive about every little thing that goes into their body. From food to medicine, and now even air, there are no limitations on what you investigate and do to improve your health. Just like you can get a water filter for better tasting and healthier water, you can also get a whole-home air filtration system for healthier and cleaner air to breathe in. These systems install right into your central air and heating units to provide filtered air to the entire home. Call the HVAC technicians at Green Tech Heating & Cooling at (720) 276-1403 to learn more about home air quality in Colorado.
Does Home Air Filter Quality Matter?
Using Cleaning Products That Don’t Have VOCs Help To Remove Airborne Contaminants
Home air quality is very important. You want to be able to breathe comfortably while at home, but if your sinuses are constantly irritated, then you cannot get the relaxation you need. Bad home air quality can result in asthma-like symptoms, with trouble breathing, nosebleeds, constant dry eyes, and nasal passages, and sore throats. Your skin will feel dry from the lack of moisture in the air. It can be difficult to detect poor indoor air quality, though.
What Causes Poor Indoor Air Quality?
There can be multiple factors that cause your home air quality to be poor, with a lot of them being indirect. A family member that smokes, hidden black mold, using lead or metal ducts and piping, construction, outdoor contaminated air like pollution that filters into the home, or weather-related causes like high moisture in the air that leads to humidity and stuffiness. Wildfires like those currently happening in California also significantly affect indoor air quality as the smoke seeps into homes. The smoke is even traveling on the winds to affect the air filtration in Colorado and Arizona, as well! Indoor air contaminants can be airborne particles such as:
- Tobacco smoke
- Perfume and body odor
- Dust mites, dander, dead skin cells
- Mold and mildew, soap scum, asbestos, fiberglass, lead
- Gas, vapor, and odor emissions from gas-related products, heavy-duty chemicals
- Toxic vapors and VOCs from disinfectants and pesticides
What are the Symptoms of Poor Air Quality?
If you notice that you sneeze a ton at home, but when you leave to run an errand or go to work, you seem fine, this is an indication that you have bad home air quality. Symptoms typically look like allergies, which make it hard to notice for people who already have other irritated sinuses. People with bad home air quality report symptoms of:
- Dry or irritated eyes, nose, throat, or skin
- Headache or dizziness (these can be signs of mold infestation or a gas leak, also)
- Coughing and sneezing
- Fatigue
- Sinus congestion
- Nausea
- Shortness of breath
How Can I Improve Air Quality?
Bad Home Indoor Air Quality Can Make People Have Allergy-Like Symptoms
If you are wondering how to improve indoor air quality in your home, it is much easier and affordable than you probably thought! Switching to FDA-approved and organic products helps dramatically. Not using harmful pesticides on your lawn that have strong chemical odors, switching to a polyethylene pipe instead of lead to prevent black mold or asbestos growth, or even using unscented cleaning products are some simple and environmentally-friendly ways that you can improve your home air quality.
Opening windows for natural ventilation or getting a humidifier to add moisture to the air. Add lots of indoor plants around the home, as plants suck in carbon dioxide, which is the polluted air that makes rooms feel stuffy, and release oxygen, helping to circulate air. Dusting regularly, mopping the floors, and changing bedding which collects tons of dead skin cells really also help to reduce the number of allergens and dust that can get distributed into the air and cause irritation. Also be sure to get any leaky pipes repaired quickly, as this could result in mold growth, with you breathing in the microscopic mold spores that fly around.
Call For Better Home Air Quality Today
Air is invisible, and unless your home is extremely smoggy like it would be on a severely polluted day outside, it is very hard to tell that there are harmful contaminants in your home’s air. While you can sometimes see particles floating in the water or taste something off about it to be able to identify the poor quality, it is not that simple with home air quality. Because it can be so hard to determine what is wrong with your air, special home air quality tests and examinations have been invented to identify the contaminants and particles in your air. If you are worried about your home air quality in Colorado, call Green Tech Heating & Cooling at (720) 276-1403 for residential air quality testing.
