Have you heard about spiking air pollution, air quality deterioration, and improving indoor air quality?

Over the years, we have been listening to the news of poor air quality and heavy air pollution in the National capital, New Delhi. You might have seen videos of cars crashing on a highway owing to the amount of smog.

These visuals paint a picture of horror in the minds of those who view these videos. Even today, many people attribute air pollution to be the cause of pulmonary infections.

Ask any person on the streets, there is a 99 per cent chance that he/she would explain air pollution in terms of industries and the number of cars on the road. Some of us might add causes like bad roads and coal and petroleum-based power plants.

But not everyone addresses the elephant in the room – the Indoor air pollution.

What is Indoor Air pollution?

Indoor air pollution is the suspension of harmful particles in the air inside your homes, or anywhere indoors for a matter of fact.

The usual contributors to indoor air pollution include dust and dirt particles, lead particles, paint particles, and moulds. Most of these are microscopic and hence are difficult to see through the naked eyes.

What is Indoor Air Quality?

Indoor Air quality is, as the name suggests, the quality of the indoor air. Indoor Air quality necessarily does not have to mean good air quality.

The condition of your house, how good or how bad it may be, we call it Indoor Air Quality.

Why is it important to maintain good air quality indoors?

Indoor Pollutants affect people with asthma and people with pre-existing lung issues. Especially, children and elderly people may find it difficult to breathe.
The repeated air pollutants exposure will affect even a normal healthy person. So it is important to maintain good air quality indoors.

Why am I writing an article “now” on Indoor Air Quality?

Well, to be honest, I started writing articles only a year ago.

But for the major parts – Why now? is simply because owing to the pandemic and lockdown restrictions, we have been inside our houses for a very long time now. This is the time, the bad indoor air quality will start to affect us.

How to improve Indoor Air Quality?

Let us explore the best 5 ways to improve indoor air quality.

1. Vacuum Your home.

indoor air quality

In the Indian household, cleaning the house is an important task. But how clean do we keep our houses?

Cleaning our house does not simply mean the usual sweeping. Dust particles settle in rugs, mattresses, and carpets. There will be cobwebs on the walls and ceilings of your house. Dirt and dust particles stay on the blades of your fans.

A good way to take these out is to vacuum these out. Why Vacuuming? you might ask. These dust particles make excellent allergens, which if you inhale will inflame your sinuses. Believe me, an inflamed sinus is not what you want.

A good vacuum cleaner will not let you inhale the dust particles, because it inhales the dust particle for you.

So go ahead and vacuum your house now and then. If you do not have a vacuum cleaner, make sure not to inhale those dust when you clean your house the next time or better get a vacuum cleaner. This little investment is a good bargain for your health.

2. Open up your windows.

Ventilation is such a magic word. It works wonders if done right. It simply means giving a path for the indoor air to escape and outdoor air to get in. If you are constructing your house, and you are constructing it in a place where the outdoor air quality is good, make sure that your house has good cross ventilation.

What is Cross Ventilation?

Well, as you may have read above, ventilation is giving a path for the outdoor air to enter and indoor air to exit.

If you have just one window in a room, there will be just one path for entering air and exiting air. This is not as effective.

This is where cross-ventilation comes in. It is a very simple method, in which you give different paths for the air to enter and air to exit.

If you are however living in a pre-constructed house, where you do not have the cross-ventilation provision, make use of exhaust fans. Exhaust fans suck out the indoor air.

When the indoor air is sucked out, a vacuum is created inside, and the outdoor air automatically comes in to fill out the vacuum. This eventually helps to improve indoor air quality.

3. Use an Air Purifier.

An air purifier is a device that runs on electricity and removes the contaminants in the air. These air purifiers can filter out allergens and irritants like dust, mould, soot, Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) and smoke particles.

An Air purifier might seem to be a big investment, but it does keep the indoor air healthy.

Before you buy an air purifier, you need to know that, there are two major technologies in air purifier. There is a passive air purifier technology and there is an active air purifier technology.

An active air purifier uses negatively charged ions to remove the contaminants, and a passive air purifier uses air filter to filter out the contaminants.

Which is better? – Passive Air Purifier or Active Air Purifier

Generally, Passive Air Purifiers are more effective, as the harmful particles are filtered permanently within the air purifier.

If you decide to use an air purifier, do not forget to clean out the filters or change the filters whenever necessary. Because, if you use an air purifier with an unclean filter, chances are high that these filters themselves can contaminate the air.

4. Stop using Air Fresheners or Room Fresheners

Good Smell does not equate to Good Air Quality. As simple as that. At the same time, Good Air Quality does not equate to unpleasant smells as well.

This air freshener is a thing we all use. Whenever something smells, whenever the room stinks, out comes the air fresheners. And what more these air fresheners come out in different exotic smells.

These smells are exotic and not very costly for a very simple reason. These fragrances are derived from the byproducts of petrol and diesel.

These air fresheners contain an umpteen number of Volatile Organic Compounds and we all can accept that VOCs are certainly not good for your pulmonary tract.

If these products are harmful then why are they not banned?

When a fragrance-based product is released, there are certain tests undergone by it. But these tests are rather skin irritation based. These products are not tested to see if they can induce an adverse health condition when inhaled.

What if a room is stinking and I need to use it?

Well, there are options of naturally scented candles or fragrances widely available in the markets which do not contain these volatile organic compounds. It is better to go for these rather than using a petroleum-based product containing harsh chemicals.

Of course, these natural products may take time to make the room smell better, but it is much better to wait to get into the room than not waiting and getting inside the coffin early.

5. Get Indoor Plants.

Stockpile on indoor plants like ferns, spider plants, indoor lilies.

When I mean stockpile, I mean like a hell a lot of stockpiling. You need to stockpile like the Americans stockpiling on toilet paper during the Pandemic.

The use of indoor plants is not just for visual purposes. Sure it adds visual enhancements to the decor. But most importantly, it removes gases like carbon dioxide and other pollutants in the air.

These plants act as natural air filters. So in case you are not in a position to spend on air purifiers, get thousands of these indoor plants.

But, there is always a downside to things. Make sure these plants are not poisonous or harmful when you accidentally ingest them. Why?

Here is a guide with 7 amazing ways to change your houses into greener spaces.

If some random relative kid of yours comes to your home and sees these plants, it might tempt them to eat those plants.

I think it would be better to take precautions than to be locked up in some random prison with worse air quality than it was in your house. That would defeat the entire purpose of the indoor plants and this entire article.

If you found this scribbled list of things about improving indoor air quality useful, kindly comment on the article.

Even you can ask any question about indoor air quality in the comment section with no hesitation.

More often than not random people do have better ideas than people like me who write the article.

So if you do have a better way to improve the indoor air quality, kindly express those in the comments. After all,

“What we know is a drop. What we don’t know is an ocean.”

The Dark

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