Five Ways to Improve Your Home Health Right Now
Make a positive impact on your home’s health today with these five simple steps.
Reduce clutter and knickknacks. Less things in your house means less places for dust to accumulate. If you decrease the amount of dust in your home, you increase your indoor air quality. Dust is made of all sort of respiratory irritants like bacteria, pollen, dander and mites. But dust itself can also produce mold growth. If some items feel too precious to part with, even putting them away in a storage bin will help you breath easier and spend less time cleaning, too.
Check the MERV rating on your HVAC filter. The filters that come standard in apartments and homes are usually a MERV 8 or below. The lower the MERV rating, the less particulates captured. MERV 11 (filters contaminates between 1.0-3.0 microns like mold and pollen) or above is considered best by Building Biology standards. Mold experts can prefer MERV 13 (filters contaminates as small as .3 microns like bacteria and viruses). This keeps dust and debris from accumulating in your ductwork, which decreases the dust in your home, too. Changing your HVAC filter every four weeks is ideal.
Check your indoor air humidity. You can buy a simple and easy relative humidity reader for $5-10 to assess and monitor your home’s humidity. After temperature, indoor air humidity is the second most important factor for indoor climate by Building Biology standards. The effects on our bodies aren’t well studied and experts often disagree. But we breathe easier in lower humidity weather and indoor environments. There’s much more at play with the composition of healthy air. Keeping humidity between 45-50% is the standard in Building Biology and mold prevention.
Vacuum carpet or rugs twice as much. However much you vacuum hard surface floors, carpets and area rugs need twice as much. Carpet is not recommended from the perspective of Building Biology or mold experts. Most carpeting is synthetic and can be a significant source of off-gassing. It traps the obvious dust, allergens and mold. But carpet also traps moisture vapor and can even be a source of mold growth. Area rugs are preferred over carpet. Smaller inexpensive synthetic area rugs like this one from Target are machine washable. Area rugs that are made of natural fibers and easier to clean like LoLoi or machine washable rugs like Ruggable are preferred.
Unplug WiFi at night and electrical items when not in use. This can significantly reduce your current exposure to electromagnetic frequencies like radiation, radio frequency and more. Consider using wired ethernet connections instead of WiFi if possible. Enable your devices airplane mode or disable WiFi and Bluetooth when not in use. Consider EMF harmonizing devices such as AiresTech (less expensive option) and Somavedic (more expensive) when and if you need to use wireless connections. There are plenty of ways to start reducing your exposure to biologically harmful wireless technology. Any change, no matter how small is worthwhile!