Clearing the air important to a healthy lifestyle
As temperatures tend to linger below freezing, it’s hardly surprising that many of us choose to stay inside our snug homes. The problem is, although the air inside your house is warm, it might not be as safe as you think.
“This time of year, we tend to want to close up our homes more, so we are recycling the inside air more often,” confirms Bob McKeraghan, president and co-owner with his wife, Nancy, of Canco Climate Care in Newmarket, Ont. “The air quality inside is much worse than the air quality outside the house.”
How much worse? At its most benign, the dry air in your home will give you itchy, irritated skin. But at its most dangerous, your home could harbour dangerous gases such as carbon monoxide — leading to poisoning or even death. Here’s what all homeowners should know before they embrace the great indoors. Dry ideas “In a typical winter,” says Nancy McKeraghan, “we’re drier than the Sahara Desert inside Canadian homes.”
That lack of humidity can irritate skin, hair and eyes, result in shocks from static electricity and even lead to shrinking hardwood floors and dried out wood furniture. If you’re suffering from one of winter’s nasty bugs, poor humidity in your home will make your sore throat, cough and headache feel even worse.
The good news is that it’s fairly easy to add humidity to your home with room units or centrally. There are even high-tech options that will automatically keep your humidity levels comfortably consistent.
The results of a healthy level of home humidity are more than just relief from dryness. “You feel warmer at cooler temperatures,” says Nancy, “so you can save on energy costs.” More than a dust up You may hate seeing dust on your furniture, but the bigger problem is the tiny particulate matter you don’t see, says Bob. That includes microscopic dust, dander and viruses, which, without a filter installed in your furnace, will continue to circulate through your house and can affect the performance of your smoke and carbon monoxide alarms.
And other, more potent materials may be in your air, too. Volatile Organic Chemicals (VOCs) from cleaning products, paints, perfumes, plastic and more can make the air in your house bad for your health. That’s even truer if your house is fairly new.
That “new house” smell tends to come from off-gases from construction materials containing such chemicals as formaldehyde, commonly used in carpet glues and manufactured kitchen cabinets. That’s a lot of chemicals floating in your new home’s air, especially given that new constructions are tightly sealed with roughly only one-third of the interior air changing every hour. Clear the air How can you reclaim your air?
“The only thing that is going to give you protection is a HEPA-type filter,” says Bob, “with charcoal canister filters that will absorb VOCs.”
HEPAs also help filter out viruses and remove 99 per cent of all microscopic particulate. Ignored, poor interior air quality can lead to irritation of the eyes, nose and throat, increasing sneezing and exacerbating what is referred to as “winter asthma.” Nancy says that people typically forget about changing their furnace filters — both the one that keeps the furnace floor clean and the one that keeps the air clean. “Maintenance of these products is important,” she adds. The silent killer While environmental comfort and air quality inside the home is something people can recognize and control to a large extent, there is a larger and more dangerous airborne issue that concerns not only the McKeraghans, but also the provincial government and the authors of regulations for the new Hawkins-Gignac Act, a law passed just last fall — car- bon monoxide (CO), known as the silent killer.
Amajor concern, Bob McKeraghan points out, is that carbon monoxide can be present in a home due to reasons beyond the homeowner’s control.
If, for instance, you live within a row of townhouses with attached garages and someone within your row warms up the car inside the garage for an extended period of time, chances are you and everyone else in that row will have carbon monoxide in your homes.
Beware too of using your garage for barbecuing or running a generator — two things you should never do as you are not only exposing yourself to the deadly gas within your garage, but also carbon monoxide will likely leak into your home.
Inside the house, too, wood and gas fireplaces, burning candles, gas furnaces, stoves, water heaters and space heaters all are sources of carbon monoxide and all can leak the deadly gas into your home if devices malfunction or venting is cracked. And you might not even know it until it’s too late.
“CO is colourless, tasteless and odourless,” says Bob. Plus, symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning — headache, nausea, disorientation — may be dismissed as a flu or other seasonal bug.
“In Ontario,” Bob points out, “more than 70 per cent of CO deaths and injuries are seen in homes.” It’s the law For that reason, the government of Ontario recently passed legislation requiring all homeowners at risk of carbon monoxide poisoning to install carbon monoxide alarms outside all sleeping areas in their homes by April 15.
But for the McKeraghans, carbon monoxide alarms, while crucial, are the last resort — the final piece of protection when all else has failed.
“We always advocate that people do routine maintenance of all their fossil fuel-burning appliances each year,” says Nancy, “so that the alarm never has to go off.”
Good advice, since, as Bob explains, the carbon monoxide levels that trigger the alarm may have little shortterm impact on a fit adult in good health, but could adversely affect an infant, the elderly or anyone whose health is compromised.
“Check your appliances, vents and chimneys,” says Nancy, “and install a CO alarm on every floor, according to the manufacturer’s directions.”
And don’t forget to keep them clean, test them regularly and replace them once they are seven to 10 years old. It’s a small investment for the health and well-being of your family.