Your Indoor Health

 

Is the air in your home healthy? In many if not all cases the pollutants in the air that are most damaging are the ones we can not see or smell. It has been established by the the American Lung Asscoiation that the air inside a home can be more harmful than the air outside. Air pollutants can be lots of things - from oven cleaner, to cigarette smoke to mold. You might notice bad smells or see smoke, but you cannot see or smell other dangers, like carbon monoxide and radon. Children can spend up to 90% of their time indoors. For their size, children can breathe up to twice as much as adults. That means children are at greater risk for health problems that come from indoor air pollution.

Air-sealing can help reduce outdoor air pollutants and building material off-gasses carried into the home through wall cavities, and attics. However, there are many pollutants that trigger asthma and allergy symptoms that are generated indoors. After reducing the sources of pollutants the next step is to properly manage the ventilation in the indoor space. Caribbean Greensafe delivers a variety of ventilation and other indoor air quality (IAQ) solutions tailored to meet the needs of each customer.

 

Mold & Mildew

Other health and saftey problems come from the air in your home too. Too much dampness causes mold to grow. Some mold is very harmful, even toxic and can make allergies and asthma worse, creating serious health problems.

 Moisture and mold can trigger asthma and othe allergic health reactions. Water and moisture also attract cockroaches, rodents, and help dust mites to thrive, which increases the probability of asthma attacks.

 

Radon In homes

Radon is a natrual oderless, colorless, tasteless gas that is produced from radium in the decay chain of uranium, an element found in all rocks and soils around the world. Radon gases escape easily from the ground into the air and disintergrates through short lived decay products called radon progeny. These short lived radon progeny emit heavily ionizing radiation called alpha particles which can be electrically charged and attached to aerosols, dust and other particles we breathe.

 The concentration of radon in a home depends on the amount of radon producing uranium in the underlying rocks, and soils, the routes available for the passage into the home and the rate exchange between indoor and outdoor air. Radon gases enters the home through cracks in the foundation, the wall-floor junction and small pores in hollow block walls.

There are a number of ways to lower the possibility of, or reduce the amount of radon if evidence determines its presence in your home. Four ways of reducing the amount of radon accumulating in a house are:

• Improving the ventilationof the house and avoiding the transport of radon from the subfloor into the living spaces;
• Increasing under floor ventiliation;
• Sealing floors and walls;
• Installing a positve pressurization or positve supply ventilation system.

Radon saftey should be considered in new hom construction, particularly in areas where radon levels are high. In Europe and the United States, the inclusion of protective measures in new buildings has become routine for some new builders, and in some countries it is now a mandatory procedure.