The Killer that Waits for Your Return from Holidays
The Killer that Waits for Your Return from Holidays
Three things have started happening to me:
- Clothes I am putting out to dry after wash do not really dry up even after hours
- Sleeping hours are stretched
- Cravings for warm food is building-up
Winter is here
The winter vibes are already here. Autumn is usually a pleasant season unless you are living in a city especially a polluted one. With no natural agent like rain or wind to subdue it, air pollution takes up a monstrous form during these months. And if you thought air pollution is happening all around the world expect inside your ‘sweet home’, then it is the biggest myth there can be.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, indoor air could be 4-5 times more polluted than outdoor air. Following are the factors owing to which the air inside your comfortable indoors could turn toxic:
- Particulate Matter (PM) in various micro-sized ratios,
- Volatile Organic Compounds or VOCs emitted by building materials and several consumer products,
- Moldy indoors and open spores,
- Smoke generated from cooking stoves or fireplaces,
- Inorganic incense burning,
- Animal hair, etc.
The Killer Air Indoors
Now try to remember the moment when you entered your apartment after coming from a week-long holiday. Didn’t you find the air stuffy from the doors and windows being closed from all this time? Right. Now, if you go and take a walk outdoors and re-enter your house, you might notice that the outdoor air feel much fresher. This is probably the air inside your home getting stale and polluted.
You may have an air conditioner or maybe heaters inside your home (depending upon the climatic conditions). Hence, it is very comfortable inside and you see no reason to complain at all, about your indoor air. But this is just another illusion.
Having the indoors air conditioned or heated, also means that the air inside has no escape route. For example, an AC will not clean or freshen up the air. It simply does one job: make indoors air cooler and bearable when it is scorching hot outdoors.
Indoor Air Pollution
The point is, it should not take us to come from a holiday to experience indoor air pollution. It is happening there all the time. The difficulty with indoor air pollution is that we get so habituated with the smell and mustiness of our indoors, that only a person coming from outside feels the difference between both the indoor and outdoor air.
A very common example of this can be you entering a coffee shop or a fast food joint. The moment you enter these places, your nose meet an aggressive smell of coffee (which you love very much, of course) or of raw food like cooked meat, salad, bread, sauces etc. This kind of smell is at first a sensory shock but slowly after a while, you do not feel it at all.
This is what happens with indoor air pollution. You get so accustomed to it that you do not actually see it causing you several health issues. Indoor Air Pollution usually causes the never-to-leave flu, cold, throat diseases, ear infection, respiratory issues to even cancer and Alzheimer’s. Lack of concentration levels amongst students, stress, fatigue and decline in stamina amongst adults, have become common household tales. Yawning comes like blinking the eyes. Recent research has shown that in pregnant women, PM2.5 can actually travel all the way to the bloodstream of the baby, through the mother. Now, this is really serious!
And yet, it is in human nature to avoid a problem unless it is so gigantic and destructive that one’s life is at immediate stake.
Indoor Air Pollution
If you are waiting for the conditions to get worse and the outdoor smog to lodge inside your homes turning them into smog chambers, then you are hopefully ready with the ‘fix’ too.
This ‘fix’ is usually buying from the store an ‘Air Purifier’. Get one, put it in a corner and go to sleep peacefully. Problem solved! But how did it assure you that it has solved the problem?
Air purifiers in actual terms are air filters that come with different levels of filtrations to tackle the problem of PM2.5-PM10. However, PM is only one part of the problem.
How do you tackle depleting levels of oxygen in the air? No matter how dust-free the air is, if oxygen levels are diminishing or are out-spaced by higher levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, it will be just like trying to drive a petrol-running car in diesel.
So did the oxygen actually go? With the unusual rise in combustion rates everywhere, and depleting reservoirs of oxygen, both from the earth’s green cover to the supply from the ocean, there is a great imbalance in the supply-demand ratio of oxygen.
Filtration again does not take away VOCs emitted by house-building agents like paint, burnish, upholstery or consumer products, like cleaning agents, air fresheners, beauty products and so many more. Filtration also does not solve the germination of microorganisms or do not fix moulds and open spores inside buildings caused by humidification.
To simply put, Indoor Air Pollution cannot be fixed with just buying a single product. It demands dedicated attention and a multi-pronged approach. You knowing about the existence of Indoor Air Pollution and that it is playing with your life and of your loved ones, will help you contemplate on what necessary steps you need to take to tackle indoor air pollution at your living space.