Healthy Home Advice From a Home Air Purifier Industry Insider and Indoor Allergy Sufferer
I'll Help You Create a Safe, Healthy, Sustainable Home...It's a Cinch If You Take It Inch By Inch
My advice in the many pages of this site is based not only on my experience as an indoor allergy sufferer and past victim of Sick Building Syndrome, but also on my many years of academic and work experience in the environmental sciences and the home air purifier industry.
To begin your journey toward a more healthy, safe, and sustainable home I recommend you begin with the basics.
Following is a healthy home infographic with some tips for improving the environmental health and safety of your home.
How does your home measure up?
Taking it to the Next Level With This Strategy for Creating and Maintaining a Safe, Clean, Healthy, Green Home Includes:
- Indoor Air Quality Testing is a good starting point because it will help you to identify possible sources of indoor air pollutants so you can remove or control them. Some examples of common airborne hazards difficult to diagnose unless you test for them are: Formaldehyde Gas from household chemical products / engineered wood products, Volatile Organic Compounds off-gassing from carpeting / furniture / gasoline, hidden colonies of actively growing toxic black mold, or particle / fume hazards from third-hand / second-hand cigarette smoke and residues).
- Source Control / Removal of indoor air pollution causes and hazardous materials (such as lead, mercury, formaldehyde, radon, and asbestos sources). My extensive household chemical encyclopedia will help identify where in your home these hazardous materials may be found, including healthy home advice for each room of your home.
- Ventilation with fresh outside air to dilute indoor air pollutants and increase oxygen levels.
- Efficient Air Purification System consisting of the very best HEPA room air purifiers and HVAC air duct filters to capture tiny particles and gases (always avoid Ozone Emitting Air Cleaners!)
- Proper Exhaust of toxic combustion equipment gases (such as deadly Carbon Monoxide Gas) and lung damaging particles (such as smoke from wood-burning stoves and cooking).
- Control of Moisture from plumbing leaks, condensation, poor drainage, water damage / outside infiltration, and humidity levels - in order to help prevent mold growth.
- Key Household Safety Equipment (such as fire-extinguishers, Smoke Alarms, Radon Monitors, and Carbon Monoxide Detectors).
- Green Building Materials / Green Cleaning Products and non-toxic techniques to reduce environmental damage and exposures to chemical toxins.
- Regular Cleaning / Preventative Household Maintenance for chemical free control and prevention of pest problems such as from cockroaches, bed bugs, dust mites, and rodents.
- Lighting / Ergonomics / Noise Control / Electromagnetic Radiation
Green Building Rising...What's Old is New Again
Our ancestors lived in well-ventilated (drafty) homes built mostly of inert all-natural materials, such as locally quarried stone and hand-cut timber.
I guess you could say Green building was the norm a hundred years ago.
There were far less chemical toxins inside homes back then. But climate control was also more difficult.
Contrast that to modern times, when indoor air pollution has become a man-made global epidemic.
Our homes are exponentially more air-tight and energy-efficient. But this means they also have the tendency to accumulate off-gassing toxins from the many chemical-based products they are constructed from and filled with.
The costs and benefits of the past have been inverted in today's homes. We have gained energy efficiency, but lost air quality because of all the accumulating by-products from our "better living through modern chemistry".
But green building is once again becoming the norm and indoor air quality has become the main focus of creating healthy home environments.
No wonder air purifier sales have exploded upwards over the last decade.
But is air purification enough?
There is No One Magic Bullet For Fixing the Indoor Air Pollution Problem
As you can see by the image above, an effective healthy home strategy is not about focusing on one magic bullet, such as an air purification system and room air cleaners as a catch all.
Don't get me wrong. An efficient HEPA air purifier able to capture the tiniest of particles and toxic chemical gases found in most homes IS important and I'll definitely help you find the best purifiers.
But source control and prevention of biological contaminants and chemical toxins should be the priority because no room air cleaner will filter out 100% of indoor air pollutants in any given volume of air, nor will it be able to always intercept pollutants before an occupant inhales them.
It is always best to control the conditions and sources before hazards result, as opposed to just treating the symptoms after there is already a problem.
For example, many homeowners and tenants think that a room air cleaner will greatly reduce or eliminate the potential health issues caused by significant amounts of second-hand cigarette smoke indoors.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Sources of the cigarette smoke should be totally removed from inside first and foremost because not even the best air purifier filters can keep up with high volumes of damaging smoke particles and toxic gases (such as Carbon Monoxide and Benzene) that indoor smoking typically causes.
I stress source control above all else throughout this site.
Air cleaners are more of a stop-gap measure not to be solely relied upon to completely fix indoor air quality problems.
Another major take-away from this site is that the majority of your "Human Footprint" and your indoor air quality, results directly from what goes into and comes out of your humble abode.
Again this ties in with source control and it is the reason why there is no place like home for "going green", clean, and toxin-free.
To learn more about how you can reduce health hazards in your home and lessen your environmental impact, try searching Home Air Purifier Expert.com for specific topics using the following site search box.
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Looking for Healthy Home Products?
Before You Buy, Check Ratings and Consumer Reports
Tip: Try searching Amazon and Allergy Buyers Club for consumer ratings and reports on air purifiers or any other healthy home products you are interested in.
Product reviews and post-purchase feedback will often indicate if a product has design flaws, manufacturers defects, or sub-par performance that may be causing buyers' remorse in those who have already made a purchase.
I always check customer feedback before I buy because it's where the rubber meets the road for gauging true quality and performance.
These sites are also excellent sources for comparing features between models of a particular brand. And reviews will often include recommendations about which features are or are not worth paying extra for.
Tip: If you want to cut to the quick on which are the best healthy home products, be sure to check Allergy Buyers Club. They have my highest recommendation.
What impresses me most about Allergy Buyers Club is that they do their own independent performance testing on allergy relief products. They have very high standards that must be met or exceeded in order to gain their approval.
For example, they test air purifiers in real world situations using advanced particle counters to measure true HEPA filter efficiency. I know of no other suppliers doing that. This is another reason their products are top of the line.
They are the industry leader and the source I trust the most. If I see it on their site, I know it must be of the highest quality and is likely best-of-breed for performance in that allergy product category.
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My #1 Healthy Home Tip:
The smartest move you can make is to first test your indoor air quality to know with certainty what specific pollutant sources may be poisoning the air your family is breathing.
Once you identify and quantify hazards like hidden toxic black mold colonies and hundreds of volatile chemical compounds - then you can better decide how to remove or minimize the hazard sources.
Here is the highly advanced, accurate, very affordable and easy to use pro-grade test kit used by healthy home experts and professional inspectors (but without the middle man mark-up or need for an expert to run test or interpret results...you just flip a switch)...
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