The factors that influence your home’s air quality vary widely. To ensure optimal air quality in your home, you can implement various air quality tests that evaluate the presence of various pollutants in your household. In general, the higher the incidence of contamination, the more health risks you’ll experience. Below are a few common air contaminants and ways to monitor your indoor air quality.
- Carbon monoxide, or CO, is a colorless, odorless gas generated from common household appliances that burn fuel, including stoves, water heaters and furnaces but also including wood stoves, gas grills, and gas-powered lawn equipment and vehicles. Exposure to carbon monoxide limits the ability of the body to process oxygen, and is potentially fatal. The only way to reveal the presence of carbon monoxide is by installing a CO detector in your home.
- Like carbon monoxide, radon is colorless and odorless. Radon enters the home from beneath the ground through soil, cracks in the foundation or a faulty drainage system. To test for radon, you’ll need a specialized kit that detects radon in the air.
- Biological pollutants encompasses a wide variety of common culprits of poor indoor air quality including mold, mildew, viruses, pollen and bacteria. Seeing and smelling suspicious substances in moist, damp areas where water can condense or pipes can leak is the most common way to detect biological pollutants. If you’re in doubt about the identity of a particular substance, you can always take it to a lab for testing. Once it’s detected, you can clean mold and mildew with ammonia.
If you want to be certain of the indoor air quality in your home, contact an HVAC professional to have it checked out. This is particularly helpful if individuals with vulnerable immune systems are living in the home. While there are no government regulations to enforce residential air quality standards, there are guidelines to ensure you’re breathing quality air.
For more expert advice about indoor air quality and other issues related to home ventilation and conditioning in your household, please contact us at Donald P. Dick Air Conditioning. We’ve been serving the Fresno area for over 40 years.
Our goal is to help educate our customers in the greater Fresno, California area about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems).