Improve your indoor air quality Do you need to improve your indoor air quality? What do you smell when you walk through your front door? Do you smell air fresheners, dryer sheets? Who knows what chemicals are in these products and how many are harmful to your health? Who knows what they do when they accumulate in your body? Or what their synergistic effects might be? [“Synergistic” means that 2 + 2 = 5, that when two or more are added together, their total effects might be worse than the sum of either separately.] The Environmental Protection Agency added synthetic fragrances to the list of chemicals that can promote asthma. Get rid of synthetic fragrances This is an easy first step to improve your indoor air quality. Though there are costly laboratory tests that can give you the total levels of volatile compounds in your air, you can improve air quality on your own, without laboratory testing. Simply discard anything with fragrance, including the following: Air fresheners, including plug-ins

Minimize your exposure to plastics, especially around food, water, and in your children’s bedrooms. There are plenty of alternatives to plastic. Use glass containers for food storage. Avoid water in plastic bottles.Minimize your exposure to combustion by-products. Step 4: Assess if you have sufficient fresh air in your home. Step 5: Minimize exposure to pesticides.Pug Puppies Sale Tampa Step 6: Reduce levels of dust and other particulates in your air.Cristo Bedroom Furniture Cleaning – To improve your indoor air quality, uBasenji Puppies For Sale In Nj The whole system needs to be cleaned, not just ducts. Replace ductwork that has porous lining. Avoid chemicals and fogging. Mechanical cleaning is recommended.

If your system had a superior, pleated filter from day 1, it may not need to be cleaned ever – though have the coils checked from time to time. On the other hand, usually contractors would not protect ducts from construction dust, so construction dust may need to be vacuumed out of ductwork. Remember, dust collects on horizontal surfaces. If you feel stuffy in bed, your bedspread or blankets may need to be washed. What about a bedspread that needs to be dry-cleaned? Try shaking it out outside. In the olden days, the blankets and quilts were hung on a clothes line and beaten with something like a tennis rack for dust removal. Step 7: Reduce exposure to biological contaminants. Most people know that deer can carry ticks that cause Lyme disease. It is not so well known that mice can, too. See the A-Z list and scroll down to “Ticks” for how to reduce the risk of exposure. Step 8: Reduce your exposure to formaldehyde Formaldehyde is a sensitizing agent, that is, it can make you more sensitive to other chemicals that didn’t bother you before you had an exposure to formaldehyde.

New buildings materials and new furniture, drapes, etc., can contain formaldehyde. New carpeting is no longer supposed to contain it. Step 9: Reduce your exposure to lead paint. Lead paint was outlawed in 1978 but painters were allowed to use up their supplies, so conceivably houses painted in 1979 or 1980 might have lead paint. If lead paint is buried under other layers of paint, it likely is not a health issue, unless someone starts sanding. The problem comes when lead paint is in bad condition, and the flaking dust adds lead to the air. Another issue is when the inside runners of window frames were painted with lead paint. Every time the window goes up or down, lead dust could be released. Step 10: Reduce your exposure to asbestos. Old houses likely have asbestos somewhere, but the most obvious place would be pipe insulation. For testing, a small bulk sample can be forwarded to a lab such as Microbac Lab, 4359 Linglestown Road, Harrisburg, PA 17112, 717-661-9700, asbestos or lead, $15-20.

Read the EPA brochures on asbestos, www.epa.gov/iaq and search on Asbestos. Last words on Indoor Air Quality Some years back, I was asked to conduct air quality testing in a vacant cottage on the grounds of an estate. The homeowners’ daughter and son-in-law, with their new baby, were coming for a visit, and my clients wanted to make sure the air quality was good. I ran a VOC scan for volatile organic compounds, a standard air quality test. An indoor sample was done, as well as an outdoor sample for comparison. Results showed indoor test levels just about the same as outdoor levels. The lab fees for the tests were in the area of $800. I thought to myself: “Just wait until the new family arrives, with their cleaning and polishing products and their personal care products and their air fresheners and their car exhaust in the attached garage. No longer will the indoor air quality in the cottage be so pristine.” If the cottage were being redecorated, with new furniture and new carpet and new paint, the levels of VOCs would be even higher.

The most common source of indoor air pollution is what we ourselves bring into our homes. For just about every product, there is a healthier choice. We need to gear our thinking that way and then to go looking for the healthier choices. How did you do with the above checklist? How would you rate your home? Make the easier changes first. Draw up a plan and work your plan. Write and tell me about improved health from what you do, ok? Now let’s proceed to the Mold tab.For more than 25 years negative air machines from Abatement Technologies have provided asbestos abatement contractors and other environmental remediation professionals with industry leading quality, performanceAbatement Technologies BULLDOG and HEPA-AIRE Negative Air Machines are engineered and built to deliver more “bang for your buck” and true HEPA filtration performance at a price competitiveWhy buy a system with a “HEPA” filter that is untested or tested at a low airflow?

Each BULLDOG and HEPA-CARE unit is equipped with a high-capacity HEPA filter individually tested and certified at the rated airflow of the device to ensure minimum filter efficiency of 99.97% @ 0.3 microns. Potential user benefits include: The main purpose of using negative air machines on an asbestos abatement job is to contain harmful asbestos fibers within the workA machine that exhausts contaminants becomes part of the problem for the facility owner, the consultant and the contractor rather than part of the solution. Cabinets are rotationally-molded or constructed using aircraft-type solid rivet fasteners to ensure strong, leak-proof seams. cabinet seams are sealed with heavy-duty, closed-cell neoprene gaskets and/or silicone, to prevent contaminated air from bypassing the HEPA and getting into the clean air exhaust. Equipment downtime and costly repairs can quickly surpass any price savings for cheaper products.