Mechanical musings
How important is the air we breathe? How important is the air we breathe to our overall health and well being? It is VERY important! It is at least as important as the food we eat or the amount of exercise we do or the quality of medical care at our disposal. Yet, we pay a lot more attention to DIET, EXERCISE and DOCTORS than we do to the quality of the air that we breathe.
We never stop breathing. It is an automatic system. Awake or asleep it doesn’t matter. We just keep on breathing and breathing. Our lungs fill up with air twelve to twenty times per minute and we intake and exhale approximately 11,000 liters of air every day.
Compare that to the measly eight glasses of water or the three to five pounds of food that we ingest. That might give us a picture of how important Air Quality is to us.
We breathe in order to bring oxygen to our body but along with the oxygen, we also bring in nitrogen, argon, carbon dioxide and some fairly well known pollutants.
Second –hand smoke
Formaldehyde
Radon
Common dust
Asbestos
Pollen
Dust mites and other insects, or parts anyway
Fibreglass spears
Amalgam of carbon
Mold spores
And a long list of nasty things that we cannot even pronounce.
This is the stew that we ask our lungs to digest. This is the toxic mixture which sometimes makes up our indoor air.
And we are trying to be healthy. We eat healthy foods. We exercise regularly. We drink plenty of water But we often do not feel well anyway.
It could be the air we breathe. It could be the office we are working in. It could be the home we call our very own. And it could be a very easy and inexpensive problem to fix.
Here are a few tips:
Those indoor plants, do you really need them? They sometimes get overwatered and that can lead to the growth of mold.
Check the quality of your routine cleaning. Are you getting all the bad stuff out of your indoor environment?
New carpets and furnishings should be off-gassed before entering an occupied space.
Empty your garbage cans daily if you can.
Clean doorknobs, handrails and other “often-touched” surfaces regularly with a product which will eliminate germs and viruses.
AND get your HVAC systems assessed by a Certified Ventilation Inspector. This equipment can be very important to the reduction of indoor air pollution. It should be as clean as the table you eat from.
The HVAC system is like the lungs of your building. If it is designed well and maintained well it will help to keep the indoor air quality of your building healthy. If you see black markings around the air diffusers or grills, it could be a sign of contaminant within the HVAC system and you may be breathing that same disgusting stuff.