Whether you’re indoors or out, the quality of the air you breathe can have a huge impact on your health. Many studies have linked poor outdoor air quality to lung cancer, stroke, and heart disease. In fact, air pollution causes 3.3 million deaths worldwide each year, according to the Harvard School of Public Health (USA).
However, although it shocks us to read it, andhe air inside our home is generally more polluted than the air outside,as reported byEnvironmental protection agency(EPA). And research shows that we spend most of our time indoors, which is a more than powerful reason to start cleaning our indoor air – in the house.
There are countless reasons why the air inside our home can be polluted.Some sources, such as building materials, furniture and electronics, can release pollutants more or less continuously, according to the EPA. Other sources of pollution, such as smoking, cleaning or changing sheets, towels, rugs …, can release pollutants intermittently. Unventilated or malfunctioning devices can release potentially dangerous levels of pollutants indoors (which is why having a working carbon monoxide detector, for example, is so important).
And if you think that spraying the environment with asprayor scented spray is enough to clean the air, think again. That smell is a form of indoor air pollution, andmost air fresheners simply release more potentially harmful chemicals into the home.And the health problems caused by those chemicals cost billions a year in treatments and lost productivity costs, according to a 2016 study published in the journal.The Lancet.
So how to improve indoor air quality without the use of chemicals? In this gallery we show you a few effective ways to make our air cleaner and, therefore, also our house to be healthier or healthier.
