With the seasons changing and our houses warming up against the autumn cold, we could be susceptible to indoor home allergies caused by bad indoor air quality. The experts at Blueair tell us all you need to know about indoor air pollution and how to tackle it.
I’ve heard that indoor air can be more polluted than outside air. Should I be worried?
Recent studies have indeed proved that indoor air can be many times more polluted than the air outside. The reason is that outdoor pollutants get inside our homes and mix with other airborne pollutants caused by household cleaning products like waxes and polishes, building materials like formaldehyde, and the flame retardants found in many materials. Burning candles and cooking also add pollutants to our indoor air. As our homes are built more energy efficient these days, we tend not to ventilate as much as before, which leads to a build-up of indoor pollutants.
See also: Give your House a Detox this Season
What are the health threats posed by bad indoor air quality?
Breathing bad air can make us feel tired, ‘down’ and spark respiratory allergies. It can also cause or contribute to serious health problems. Research by Royal College of Physicians (RCP) and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) said polluted air can cause health problems from before birth into old age. It has been linked to asthma, allergies, cancer, heart disease, obesity and dementia.
What can I do to improve the bad air at home?
Simple solutions to improve indoor air is to ventilate more often and replace household cleaners with non-polluting alternatives such as baking soda, soap, lemon and white vinegar.
See also: Geothermal Heating Explained
How does an air purifier work?
An air purifier captures airborne pollution by sucking in air, passing it through a filter that captures the polluting particles and pushes the clean air into a room.
How often do I need to change the filters?
That depends on how polluted your indoor air is, but on average we believe the filter should work fine for at least six months before it needs to be changed.
How expensive are air purifiers?
The size of a room dictates the size of air purifier you should use. Bigger spaces need larger air purifiers to handle the volume of air. Blueair air purifiers range from around a few hundred pounds for a small unit, great at cleaning rooms sized around 200 square feet, to over a thousand pounds for really large 1,000 square foot rooms.
Read more on Celebrity Angels about how to tackle other types of allergies.
