Indoor Air Quality

Purifiers, Filters, UV Lamps, and More

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There’s no need to breathe poor air and risk your health. We understand the importance of providing efficient and cost-effective solutions that improve indoor air quality. Contact the professionals at Green Leaf A/C and Heating to ensure your home or office’s air quality is at peak conditions.

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Indoor Air Quality: What It Is and What It Can Do For You

Get The Most Out Of Your Indoor Space

Indoor air quality (or IAQ) relates to how indoor air can affect your health, comfort, and ability to work. You can determine air quality based on many factors. A few big ones include poor ventilation, excessive humidity, and moisture, or failing to change your air filters.

Positive qualities of IAQ can include:

  • A comfortable temperature and level of humidity. 
  • Plenty of outside air comes in to replace the stale air. 
  • Controlled levels of pollutants and volatile organic compounds (VOC) living in the air. 

There are many benefits to having clean air inside your home. The most considerable effect of them all is on your health. Poor indoor air quality keeps you sick and significantly harms young children, elderly adults, and people living with asthma.

You can clean up the indoor air quality in your home with a few tricks. One of the best ways to remove indoor air pollution is by controlling individual sources of pollutants. These pollutants come from things like gas stoves and furnaces. You should also be aware of the pollutants inside household chemicals and paint. Polluted indoor air can be a sign of poor ventilation. Opening the doors and windows daily to ensure fresh air can get in is an excellent place to start. Still, you may need more help. You may need repairs done on your air ducts, but an air cleaner may also help.

Green Leaf offers several air cleaning systems capable of restoring good IAQ. We have:

  • air purification systems 
  • energy recovery ventilators
  • media filters
Smart Phone used to Test Air Quality

Indoor Air Quality Testing For Everyday Families

Do You Know What You Are Breathing?

Air is the most critical thing in our home. We breathe it constantly. Breathing clean air is just as important as drinking clean water. Good indoor air quality constitutes several factors. Three main factors are a comfortable temperature, pollutant control, and humidity levels between 30-50 percent.

There are many benefits to air quality testing. Bad air quality keeps you sick and is harmful to breathe. Breathing polluted air interferes with the oxygen absorption process. It can cause memory loss, low blood oxygen levels, and the deterioration of your lungs. Other symptoms of poor IAQ are:

  • Allergy-like symptoms, itchy eyes
  • Trouble breathing
  • Headaches
  • Fatigue
  • Asthma

Knowing whether these symptoms come from toxic air can be challenging. However, experiencing symptoms that only persist as long as you are in your home indicates poor air quality. Improving the air quality will increase your comfort and remove unnecessary health risks.

You may be wondering if you have to hire someone or if indoor air quality testing is something you can do. DIY IAQ tests exist but are far from being as accurate as an official test. A specialist can test for specific pollutants in the air and help identify any mechanical issues causing the problem. Additionally, an at-home test may be less helpful. The major benefit of hiring a professional HVAC company, like Green Leaf, is that they can interpret the results. From there, they provide suggestions for further action and help you make a plan. If you are worried about indoor air quality, call a Green Leaf specialist today.

Factors That Contribute to Poor Indoor Air Quality

Is the Quality of Air in Your Home at Risk?

Many factors contribute to the air quality in your home. Familiarizing yourself with these factors will lead to you breathing cleaner air. Keep reading to learn about the four most common factors affecting indoor air quality.

Humidity control is the most important thing you can do to prevent harmful pollutants, like black mold, from growing in your home. There are many different reasons you could have problems with humidity and moisture. You could be experiencing: 

  • Water leaks. 
  • Moisture rising from the crawl spaces. 
  • Moisture trapped in the air from outside. 

A healthy humidity level is between 30-50% in Texas. Levels above 50% lead to biological growth. Levels below 30% lead to symptoms like skin irritation, sore throat, and nose bleeds, to name a few. If you are experiencing high humidity levels, it may be best to contact a specialist at Green Leaf.

When your home has poor ventilation, polluted air cannot escape. This causes it to recirculate toxic air. Inadequate ventilation also leads to the buildup of pollen and dust. People who have allergies or asthma are especially sensitive to this buildup. You can encourage your home’s ventilation system by opening doors and windows to let in fresh air. However, you may also want to consider replacing your ventilation system.

As much as we love them, pets can be hard on your home’s indoor air quality. Fur and dander from our animals can build up in the filters of our HVAC system, as well as anything they might have picked up outside. Changing the air filters once a month will dramatically improve the air quality. There are also filters specifically designed to trap fur and dander.

Like fur and dander, dust buildup can also affect indoor air quality. Dust may consist of a lot of different things, such as: 

  • Dead skin cells
  • Pollen
  • Hair
  • Dirt 

Try dusting with a microfiber towel to reduce dust particles in your air. They trap dust particles inside of them, unlike traditional dusters that move dust around. It will also help to keep your floors and baseboards vacuumed. If all else fails, you may need to have your air ducts cleaned or look into an air purification system. Call a Green Leaf Specialist, and we will have you breathing clean air in no time.

Kid Sneezing from Dust in the Air
House Graphic with Pollutant Terms

Indoor Air Quality and The Usual Suspects

The Most Common Toxic Indoor Air Pollutants

There are so many different sources of indoor air pollution. It can come from chemicals, mold, pests, or organisms in your air. Pollutants can cause serious health risks at worst. However, even in the best case, they trigger your allergies and keep you exhausted. 

 

Pollutants can be neither seen nor smelled, so it is important to know what you are looking for. Understanding the most common indoor air pollutants will radically improve the quality of your life.

Radon is a radioactive compound formed in the soil and then released into the air. It can seep into your home through small cracks in the floor or holes in walls that are in contact with the ground. Radon is the leading cause of lung cancer in non-smokers. Unfortunately, it is also the second leading cause of lung cancer among smokers and non-smokers.

Call a radon mitigation specialist immediately if you discover Radon in your air.

Combustion Pollutants found indoors come from gas-burning appliances. These pollutants become harmful when they get released in areas not adequately ventilated. A few examples of gas-burning appliances would be

  • wood stove 
  • space heater 
  • water heaters, etc. 

The number of pollutants produced and the level of danger varies on a few things. 

  • What appliance you’re looking at 
  • How well was it installed and maintained 
  • Is the area it lives in vented well
  • What kind of fuel is it burning 

For example, carbon monoxide (CO) is one we hear about a lot because it is deadly. CO poisoning causes headaches and dizziness. In addition, it prevents your brain from receiving oxygen. So essentially, you are suffocating while still filling your lungs with air. The best way to reduce combustion pollutants is to ensure that the areas around your appliances are well-ventilated.

Volatile Organic Compounds, or VOCs, come from many places in your home.

  • Paint
  • New flooring
  • Cleaning Products, etc. 

Meniscal VOC levels are normal, while large amounts are dangerous and pose serious health risks. Symptoms can include headaches and nausea. Prolonged VOC exposure can damage your liver, kidneys, or central nervous system. At its most severe, it causes cancer.

You can reduce VOCs in your home by purchasing cleaning products labeled VOC-free. You should also ensure good ventilation when using products that contain VOCs. For example, open the window or door so that the pollutants have somewhere to go other than your house. Chemicals containing VOCs have been shown to evaporate at room temperature. They release their compounds while in use and also while being stored for use. Therefore, it is essential to keep products containing VOCs outside the house.

Mold is made up of living organisms. Many kinds of mold can grow in your house, but black mold is the most common. Mold grows by releasing spores. First, the spores float in the air until they find a damp surface to grow on. They then repeat this cycle, growing more rapidly as more spores settle. Mold is a very serious problem and needs to be handled immediately. Breathing or touching mold can cause Hay Fever type symptoms. It will also trigger severe asthma attacks.

If you think you are experiencing symptoms of toxic indoor air, you should call a specialist immediately. Many of these pollutants have severe implications for your health if not handled. Green Leaf specializes in clean air. Therefore, you can trust us to find the culprit and formulate a plan so that you can live comfortably.

Green Leaf Indoor Air Quality Control

Products Carried and Maintained by Our Technicians

Stop stressing over the indoor air quality of your home. Green Leaf A/C and Heating can install a variety of different high-quality products that can restore your home’s IAQ. We have air purifiers, filters, and UV lamps for every situation regardless of budget, building size, or need.

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