Indoor Air Quality

I’m Jody King-Colegrove with Quantum Techniques and today I want to talk about indoor air quality. Many times people don’t realize it, but the indoor air quality of our houses is not good. If you’ve ever done a remodel of your home, often all those smells stay inside the house and don’t ever escape. It’s important to make sure that your home has good airflow, and there are many things that contractors are now doing to ensure that the inside air is being exchanged with the outside air. It is an important concept, so I want to share some things that you can do to help you and family.

One source that I researched says that 75% of households have poor indoor air quality, and often it has to do with scented air fresheners. I recently moved to an area where there are many people who have that air fresheners inside their homes. It’s important to teach people that this impacts their health because it produces indoor air pollutants. Interestingly, children and pets are impacted more because of their small size. Kids have 30% more likelihood of toxicity to air fresheners because they’re size compared to adults. Cats, dogs and birds are even smaller so they really are going to be affected. Also, most pets spend close to 100% of their time inside the house, especially birds and cats, so they can really be negatively impacted.

You might not realize that you are having an issue with indoor air quality, because it may not show up as a respiratory problem, but it is happening. When I’ve tested people I’ve found that polluted indoor air can affect the spine, the mucosal lining of the nose and throat and even women’s vaginal fluid. Indoor air quality affects many different things, many of which you may not be aware. What is it that’s in air fresheners that impacts us? It’s something called volatile organic compounds (VOC). These are different chemicals, including formaldehyde, that can create issues with our lungs and also our heart. They can cause relatively minor conditions such as nosebleeds and asthma, and more serious things like cancer of the nose and throat.

Oftentimes when I’ve cleaned carpets when moving from rental properties, my son has developed nosebleeds, which is an indication that he’s breathing in too much toxicity. Other things it can impact include inflammation, hormone levels, semen quality, birth defects and reproductive harm. Recently we’ve moved a couple of times and have been impacted by more chemicals than is typical, and my dog’s endocrine and reproductive systems were affected to the point that she was unable to have her heat cycle for an entire year. I’m happy to say that we’ve cleaned that up and she’s back on the mend.

Scented candles are another thing that can impact our indoor air quality. Some of it depends upon the quality of the wax; those with very poor quality can contain toxic levels of heavy metals which may increase the likelihood of asthma and allergies and may even produce more of a risk for cancer. Burning incense can be worse than cigarette smoke, so that’s not a good option either.

So what can you do in order to help increase the air quality indoors? The most obvious thing is to open the windows to get fresh air. Additionally, you can use indoor air purifiers; I’ve found ones that use ozone are very helpful. Indoor plants naturally eliminate air toxins and produce oxygen, so it’s important to have them throughout the house. If you do want some kind of a scent in the air, one of the things that you can do is simmer mint or cinnamon in a saucepan on the stove. To help our garbage disposal smell better, we grind up fresh orange peels. Those are a few things that you can do to improve the air quality of your home.

If you want to improve the health and happiness for yourself, your family and your pets, go to quantumtechniques.com and learn more about this type of subject matter. Contact me at jody@quantumtechniques.com, and I’ll test your indoor air quality to find out whether it’s harmful or helpful. Thank you!