Indoor air quality is all about the safety and health of the air that you breathe inside of any buildings. Whether that building is your home, your office, or anywhere else that you like to go, you’ll want to pay close attention to that air quality and do whatever you can to improve it at any cost. But why do you even need to improve indoor air quality? What is indoor air quality in the first place? And what can you do if you do decide to improve it?
What is It?
Let’s start with what indoor air quality even is. Well, it’s the quality of the air that’s inside of a building. Now, that probably doesn’t sound like a very good description, but it’s the best one available. Indoor air quality is all about whether the air inside of the facility or building is going to be good to breathe or if it’s contaminated with any of a host of different chemicals, contaminants and more. You want to make sure that you’re spending your time in places that have good air quality.
Why DO You Need to Improve Indoor Air Quality?
You need to improve indoor air quality because it’s going to help you and your family, your customers and everyone around you to be healthier and to feel better. You’ll be able to breathe better and you’ll be able to reduce the risk of different health problems and conditions. Some are short-term or minor, while others can actually be major and long-lasting.
- Headaches
- Dizziness
- Shortness of breath
- Heart disease
- Cancer
- Lung disease
- Viral/bacterial infections
You don’t want to get sick, but if you’re not paying attention to the quality of the air that you’re surrounding yourself with that’s exactly what’s going to happen. You could get sick or you could get sick more frequently because that air quality is so bad.
What Can You Do To Improve Air Quality?
There are plenty of different things that you can do to improve air quality and they all depend on you having at least a little bit of control over what’s going on in the space. If you don’t have the ability to make changes you’re not going to have the ability to improve the quality of the air.
- Increase fan usage
- Open more windows and doors
- Open outside vents
- Use HVAC fan
You want to make sure that you are using as many options as possible for increasing air flow and especially air flow that circulates the indoor and outdoor air. If you do, you’re going to decrease the chances that people around you will spread different illnesses or that the air trapped inside of the building will be contaminated with chemicals or other pollutants.
Beware of Outside Air
You shouldn’t automatically assume that air outside of a building is safe and healthy for you or anyone else. You want to make sure that you check the contamination levels and find out more about just how polluted the air around you is. From there, you’ll be able to figure out if the air outside or the air inside is of better quality.
If your inside air is better than the air outside you should look for ways to improve filtration and circulation but stop the air outside from getting into the building. You don’t want to contaminate the air even further. That means closing any ventilation inside the building that could allow the air from outside to get in.
You want to watch for things like:
- High levels of smog
- High concentration of chemicals
- Increased insect concentration (if they can get into the vents)
These things could cause the air quality in your home or business to worsen and could put others in danger of catching different diseases or getting sick in general from chemicals and more. You want to make sure that you are paying attention to all of the things that could affect your air quality.
Who is at Risk From Poor Indoor Air Quality?
Unfortunately, everyone is at risk when the indoor air quality is bad, just like everyone is at risk if you have poor air quality outdoors. Breathing in the polluted air could cause any number of problems that range from minor and temporary to serious and long-lasting.
Those who are especially young or old and those who already have breathing problems or health problems are most at risk. That doesn’t mean that anyone else should feel like they are immune to the potential problems. Contrarily, everyone can have health problems from poor air quality and it’s possible to develop serious problems even if you never have had something like it before.
What Can I Do To Protect Myself?
If you don’t have control over the air quality in an area that you are forced to visit frequently you want to make sure that you are doing everything you can to protect yourself from the dangers that are associated with that poor air quality. This includes:
- Wearing a face mask to avoid breathing in harmful particles
- Avoiding long stays in that area
- Staying close to well-ventilated areas
- Staying close to open windows or doors for outside air flow
- Avoiding getting too close to others if there is poor circulation
Following these guides will help you avoid breathing in harmful bacteria or contaminants and will also make sure you’re getting the best benefits from air flow and circulation. gatewaymechanical.ca
