There is no need to explain to you why the air in the cities is so contaminated. This is absolutely obvious once you spend some time nearby a busy road or a factory. Yet, regardless of the place of your residence, your home is generally rather vulnerable to various air pollutants. Of course, for city dwellers, the level if air contamination at home will always be higher than is for the people living in the countryside unless the latter have their homes located in a rather close proximity to industrial farms.
No matter where you live right now, the air at your home is still polluted as there are lots of sources of contamination right inside your house. Ironically, you yourself is one of the major sources of pollutants. Yet, there are some things which can help you to keep the air at your home cleaner. You will find some useful recommendations in this article.
Tips for the people who are just planning to move in
If you are about to change your place of living or are at the step of redesigning the interior of your house, you should think carefully about the materials you are going to use.
It is not a secret that various products used for construction and design such as glues, polishes, paint, some types of wallpaper, floor laminate tiles and many more items are great sources of rather dangerous chemical compounds which can cause an entire range of health problems including cancer. It might be not possible to create a completely ecological home today, however, there are several thing you can do in order to minimise the contaminants.
First of all, resign from purchasing any furniture or other items made of such materials as polyethylene, polyurethane, foam rubber, particle boards as well as fiberboards. The harmful elements in these materials are vaporised making the air at home filled with such harsh chemicals as formaldehyde, styrene, phenol, and others.
The most ecological materials for your internal design are wood, bamboo, paper and ceramics. There is also no need for painting the ceiling with any water-resistant paint when you can use a simple one based on a pigment and water.
One more suggestion is to resign from covering the entire floor with carpet.
Reduce the number of carpets and other textiles at home
As it has just been mentioned, you should not cover the entire floor with carpet. The reason for it is the fact that carpets tend to get extremely dirty and they are perfect places for various pathogenic microorganisms and small insects. It is really rather difficult to keep your carpet absolutely clean whereas leaving it like that without proper cleaning can have serious effects on your health.
It is a very good idea to resign from unnecessary textiles if they are not needed. Of course, not everyone love leatherette sofas and armchairs whereas these pieces of furniture are also not healthy as eco-leather is made of polyurethane which is harmful itself.
Yet, there is a great difference between a house with a sofa and armchairs and a house in which this furniture is covered with various cushions and blankets. It is even worse if you do not keep your clothes inside your wardrobe and have a tendency of piling it up right inside the room. As you can imagine, this adds a great amount of dust to the air and, at the same time, feeds all of the microorganisms at home.
Switch to milder chemicals for cleaning your home
One of the greatest things you can do is resigning from harsh chemicals for cleaning your house. These are not only harmful for the quality of the water which can be rather disruptive for the natural environment. Another negative impact of these substances is the fact their vapours are also collected inside your hose contaminating the air.
Of course, sometimes you might need a harsh chemical for particular cleaning, but if you clean your house on a regular basis, there is no need to expose yourself and your family to dangerous vapours.
Stop smoking at home
One of the least obvious things you can do is stopping smoking at home in case you are doing it. Certainly, smoking itself is harmful for your lungs and generally for your health conditions, however, the issue coming from smoking at home is not just making it smell of old cigarettes. There is another serious problem about that.
It turns out that all of those substances remaining at your home after smoking which make it smell like it smells have various chemical compounds. Once ozone and ozone oxides come inside your house from outside they develop new substances which were proved to be able to cause cancer.
This form of smoking is not exactly a passive one, however, it is pretty dangerous as well. That is why, if you have such a habit and cannot battle it, you should at least smoke outside.
Of course, cleaning your house regularly is one of the things you can do to keep the air inside clean.