Healthy Home Tips: Some Simple Steps to Improve Indoor Air Quality

Many of the recommendations that I and other indoor air quality professionals make can be very expensive – like installing hardwood or tile floors, or replacing a hot-air heating systems with baseboard or radiator heat. But there are a number of things you can do that won’t cost a fortune and that can help keep the air in your home clean and allergen and irritant free. Below are 15 examples.

1. Remove your shoes when entering the house, and ask that other family members and guests do the same. This will help keep soil out – and some of that soil can even contain lead dust, if you and neighbors live in homes more than 30 years old and that have been scraped and painted.
2. If you have plants indoors, put a waterproof dish under each pot. If the room is carpeted, be careful not to spill water on the carpet, because this may lead to mold growth.
3. Not to be indelicate, but remember to close the toilet before flushing to minimize bioaerosol (airborne particles that come from living things, such as bacteria and even the H1N1 virus).
4. Don’t burn jar candles, which can produce a lot of soot. Soot particles are unhealthy to breathe in and of themselves; in addition, they can act as surrogate (substitute) allergens if they’ve been in contact with mold or pet dander, and then become re-aerosolized.
5. Use a vacuum with a HEPA (high efficiency particulate arrestance) filter, because conventional vacuums spew out allergens and irritants in their exhaust. If you hire cleaning help, be sure they use your vacuum, and not their own. If you have a central vacuum system, be sure the system exhausts to the exterior and not into your garage or basement.
6. Avoid using laundry detergent that contains enzymes, because these chemicals can exacerbate asthma symptoms.
7. To help control mold growth, dehumidify your basement in the humid season. Keep the relative humidity at or under 50%. And if you have a finished basement, keep it consistently warm (thermostat set at a minimum of 60ºF), whether you are using the space or not.
8. Only use a dehumidifier that condenses water and not one that only exhausts air. Don’t run the dehumidifier in the winter.
9. If you have a garage that is attached in any way to your house, don’t leave the car running in the garage, or combustion products can flow up into habitable spaces.
10. Be sure you have an exhaust fan over your stove, and that the fan vents to the exterior. This will help reduce moisture, cooking odors and combustion products in the house.
11. After showering, leave the bathroom door open, and operate a table or tower oscillating fan in the room (plugged into a GFI outlet, please) for an hour, to speed drying of surfaces and help prevent mildew growth.
12. Dogs and cats are living dust mops. If you have a dog or cat, don’t let the pet sleep in the bedroom of someone with allergies or asthma – like your son or daughter – and keep your pet out of the basement if it smells musty.
13. If anyone in your family is allergic to dust mites, be sure every mattress, box spring and bed pillow in the house has a dust-mite cover. Use the covers with polyurethane liners. You can save money by buying the all-plastic encasings for the box springs and mattresses; just put an extra-thick, cotton mattress pad on top, so the sleeper won’t feel the plastic. Never take a dust-mite cover off a mattress unless the mattress was new to begin with, because then dust-mite allergens will escape into the room.
14. If you have baseboard or radiator heat, vacuum the baseboard convectors or the surfaces of the radiators before the heat turns on each year, to get rid of irritating, allergenic dust. Use a 36-inch vacuum crevice tool (Google 36 inch vacuum crevice tool) to get to hard-to-reach places.
15. Clean your portable air conditioner before you use it for the first time every year, and add filter material (at least MERV 7) to the intake grill, to help keep the cooling coil clean. If you have central air conditioning and/or hot air heat, use a MERV-8 pleated media filter in the air handler. Be sure the filter holder is air tight (you can cover it with duct tape if it’s open), and change the filter as frequently as is needed.