Indoor Air Quality Testing: Your Solution For Comfort and Safety

Keeping your home a safe place for you and your family is a number one priority. That's why it's vital to have your property undergo indoor air quality testing.

But what determines if indoor air quality is 'safe' or 'ideal'?

Let's learn more about metrics used to determine what indoor air quality you should be shooting for.

Indoor Air Quality: Fast Facts You Need To Know

There are some crucial facts about indoor air quality and indoor air quality testing that every property owner should know.

• Cooking can lead to air pollution. Depending on your fuel source, cooking food can make your immediate surroundings downright hazardous. According to the World Health Organization, people using inefficient fuel sources contribute to staggering indoor air pollution. Burning wood on a low-quality stove can increase soot particles in your home. 
• Air quality isn’t universal. Not everyone has the same exposure to pollutants, though. Someone living near a highway has a higher risk of coming into contact with air pollutants than someone living rurally. Everything from the time of year to the weather can affect these readings.
• Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs). VOCs are compounds in household cleaning products, paint, and many other tools used in home repair and reconstruction. As the name suggests, overexposure to these volatile organic compounds can lead to health issues. When using heavier organic compounds, you must wear safety equipment and ensure proper ventilation. Whether it’s painting a room or using a pesticide indoors, always ensure there’s fresh air flowing.
• We spend 90% of our time in our homes. According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), we spend around 90% of our time indoors. As such, air quality indoors is a big deal.
• Health can indicate low indoor air quality. As you’ll soon see, poor indoor air quality can lead to severe health conditions and irritating symptoms. As such, certain conditions can indicate that your residence is exposed to dangerous pollution levels.
• Ventilation is key. Airflow is crucial to improving indoor air quality. Exposure to indoor pollutants without adequate ventilation can lead to terrible health issues. As such, it’s vital to allow for the flow of fresh air into your home. It’s imperative to increase ventilation if you’re painting, cooking, or engaging in other activities that produce air pollutants.

Indoor Air Quality Testing

Your home should be a safe haven for you and your family, not a source of hazardous pollutants that cause health concerns. Getting the indoor air quality tested is crucial to ensuring your home’s air is safe to breathe. 

But how does indoor air quality testing work? What do you need to know?

How To Test Indoor Air Quality

Understanding how air quality testing works is your first step to a safer home. 

• Get an air quality monitor. The easiest way to determine the difference between healthy and dangerous air quality is by getting ahold of an air quality monitor. This helps tell you different things about the air quality in your home. Depending on your type, it could tell you about humidity and air quality index, or AQI. The AQI is the EPA’s way of determining what air quality is safe.
• How are you feeling? Health symptoms can tell a story. Indoor air quality can significantly affect your health. Keeping that in mind, are you experiencing various health symptoms? It could result from poor air quality in your home, especially if you’ve bought an air quality monitor that tells you your air quality is poor. However, you must contact your doctor or medical professional about any symptoms. 
• Check for carbon monoxide and radon. While indoor pollutants can contribute to bad health problems and bothersome symptoms, odorless gasses like radon and carbon monoxide are deadly. Monitoring for carbon monoxide and radon is vital to staying safe. Ensure you equip your home with carbon monoxide and radon detectors. You can often purchase combination smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors, making it easier to detect danger. 

How Indoor Air Quality Affects Your Health

Indoor air pollution has unsavory and dangerous effects on your health. For example, volatile organic compounds alone can cause runny noses, asthma attacks, and headaches all on their own. 

Once again, according to the World Health Organization, millions of people fall victim to illnesses caused by low indoor air quality. 

Leading Health Conditions Caused By Poor Air Quality

Some of the most prominent health conditions are caused directly or in part due to poorer air quality in your home. 

• Pneumonia. 
• Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)
• Stroke
• Lung Cancer
• Other respiratory issues

These various conditions and symptoms can also be indicative of rampant mold growth. In that case, you must contact mold removal specialists to help eradicate mold as soon as possible.

Five Star Restoration: Calling Professionals For Advice

Which device should you choose? Do you have a toxic mold problem? It can be a lot to determine on your own. 

That’s why contacting home repair, and restoration professionals is a great move. 

Remember, not everyone’s home or property experiences the same variables causing air quality changes. Someone in a city may experience heavy emissions from being situated next to a street. On the flip side, someone in the country could be polluting their home with VOCs without proper ventilation.

In short, it depends. And that’s where professionals can lend expert advice to help you through the process of cleaning your air.

At Five Star Restoration, experts with years of experience know what makes a home a safe place to live—as such, calling Five Star Restoration will allow you to determine the different factors in your particular situation. Whether it’s extensive water damage or fixing water leaks, the team at Five Star knows how to solve problems. And Five Star keeps in line with California code, ensuring everything is by the books.

With an emphasis on community and expert home safety measures, the professionals at Five Star Restoration will work diligently to ensure that your home is safe for you and your entire family to reside. Finally, you’ll be able to take a deep breath of fresh air without worrying about pollutants. 

Call Five Star Restoration today for more information about ensuring your home is safe from all pollutants. Whether it be the after-effects of VOCs or staying safe from carbon monoxide, Five Star Restoration has homeowners in the Inland Empire breathing easy.