Dealing with Common Indoor Air Pollutants

When you think of polluted air, the first images to race in your mind are the sprawling cityscapes and factory areas where smog hangs heavy in the air. What most homeowners don’t know is that air pollutants are as common in the home as they are outside.

Airworks, Inc., your air conditioner repair and heating experts, shares what the most common indoor air pollutants are and how to reduce or completely get rid of them in your home.

Second-Hand Smoke

This is the most common air pollutant plaguing homes and comes from incompletely burned tobacco products. Most people consider it as harmless, unaware that it contains over 4,700 chemical ingredients. Exposure to this pollutant can cause irritation in the eyes, nose, throat and aggravate respiratory conditions and allergies.

How to reduce this pollutant is quite simple. Don’t smoke cigarettes or cigars in your home. If you have to smoke, it’s best you do it outside where the secondhand pollutant won’t cling to furniture or end up in the ventilation shafts of the heater or air conditioner.

Mold

This is another fairly common indoor air pollutant and is usually the result of a leak from the walls or the roof. Mold thrives in warm and humid spaces, and they release spores throughout the air. More often than not, these spores end up in the air vents or even the AC and heater, where they further spread throughout the house.

Most types of fungi are harmless, only potentially triggering allergic reactions from people. There are, however, toxic variants of mold that present a real health risk to many people.

The proliferation of mold and other volatile organic compounds can easily be stopped by ensuring proper ventilation in your home. This removes old and stale air from the indoors and lets in fresh air from outside.

On top of ensuring proper ventilation, it’s also vital that you keep your AC, heater, and HVAC system in good working condition. While not all air pollutants originate as a fault in these systems, they can exacerbate the problem.

Airworks, Inc. offers expert HVAC repair. Call us today at (406) 630-4170 to learn more about our heating and cooling services. We offer heater and air conditioner repair in Whitefish and Kalispell, MT.