Why Indoor Air is Dirtier than the Air Outside

Being able to breathe is pretty easy to take for granted if you aren’t subject to any breathing problems, but air—and having the ability to breathe it—is at the top of any comprehensive list of survival needs. And if you want to be able to breathe well, not just any old air will do. You need clean air, or at the very least, you need to be breathing the cleanest air possible. We know about outdoor pollution and the problems associated with emissions from vehicles and manufacturing facilities, but the Environmental Protection Agency’s publication called The Inside Story: A Guide to Indoor Air Quality explains that indoor air is actually a worse problem. In fact, indoor air is often two to five times more contaminated than the air outside. The reasons why might surprise you.

Cleaning Agents

 

In our endless efforts to keep our homes clean, we are actually filling our indoor air with organic pollutants. Now the word organic sounds harmless. After all, we pay a premium for organic these days. But when it comes to pollutants, organic chemicals can do as much harm as their synthetic counterparts. And many products that we use to clean and disinfect are mucking up our air even while they give us shiny ovens, sparkling sinks and spotless countertops.

 

Cosmetics

 

We also want to keep ourselves clean, groomed, and styled. We want to look good and smell good, and we use lots of products in striving for this goal. And everything from perfumes to shaving creams leave behind something we can’t see: particles that we can end up breathing all the time.

 

Chemicals in Building Products

 

Another way our indoor air gets polluted is by the vapors emitted from the house itself. Your home may be silently releasing vapors from the materials used in flooring, treated lumber and other components of the structure itself. There’s not much you can do to address the cause, but you can make it a priority to be sure this nasty stuff is being removed from the air consistently.

 

Pesticides

 

The fact that pesticides may be harmful when you breathe it is probably less surprising than the other two. After all, these chemicals are designed to take life. However, we imagine that what will hurt a tiny ant, spider or roach couldn’t hurt us, and that’s not really true. The EPA points out in Pesticides’ Impact on Indoor Air Quality that the “cide” in pesticide means to kill and that these types of products can be dangerous to humans. They don’t need to stay in our circulating air for long periods of time.

 

So if cleaning, using cosmetics, keeping pests away and even your home itself is creating these indoor air pollutants, what can be done about it? The solution is in making sure these particles get trapped, locked away, and disposed of. One of the best ways to do that is to use the right air filters and to practice good filtration hygiene. That simply means using the right filters and changing them at the right time. We help make that easy by offering a variety of high-quality air filters that are designed to trap air contaminants and keep them out of your lungs—and we deliver them right to your door.

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