Indoor Air Quality

The air quality inside our homes can have a major impact on our health and is a great starting point for low toxifying your home. The majority of toxins and chemicals that most of us are exposed to are from within our homes. Reducing toxins and chemicals that we are exposed to by the indoor air we breathe can greatly and positively improve our health on many levels. So here are a variety of things to consider and specific strategies as you LowToxify your home.

Bring Fresh Air Into Your Home

Open the windows in your house at least 10 minutes every day, especially in the winter to get fresh outside air to circulate into your home. Also, be sure to go outside every day to allow natural light on your face and fresh air in your lungs. Take a few deep breaths and notice nature around you.

Utilize and Enjoy House Plants

This is our most fun suggestion! Indoor filter plants can enhance the atmosphere in your home while filtering toxins at the same time. We suggest you go to your local nursery and see what you can find, but we have included some links here in case you can’t find what you are looking for and so you can see the images of what each specific plant looks like. Here are some effective and common filter plants:

• Spider plants
• Dracaena
• Snake plants
• Peace lilies
• Costa Farms 4-pack Clean Air Collection

Use an Air Purifier

Air filters and purifiers are essential to having good indoor air quality in your home. We love our Air Doctor and we use it daily between our two bedrooms. We also have an older Bionaire Air Purifier that we use in the basement. Look for a purifier with a HEPA filter to catch the smaller particles floating in the air. Make sure to diligently change your filters in your air purifier in order to ensure continued quality air.

• Air Doctor
• Bionaire Air Purifier

Minimize “Extra” Impurities In Your Indoor Air

• Remove air fresheners. These are extremely toxic and constantly release chemicals into your air. They are made with ingredients that are known endocrine disruptors, messing with your hormonal balance and communication systems within the body.
• As a replacement, you can diffuse essential oils which will make your house smell amazing, offer many health benefits, and some will even clean and purify the air!
  • Make sure to know and follow the essential oil safety guidelines, especially around kids and pets. Essential oils are very concentrated medicines and can overwhelm our systems if we use them improperly.  Also, take breaks from diffusing, I only like to diffuse for about an hour at a time and then off for the rest of the morning or afternoon. The smell will linger and you can still enjoy the benefits even when your diffuser is off.
• Burn beeswax candles with cotton wicks and remove any paraffin candles from your home. Beeswax has antimicrobial and healing properties. Paraffin is made from petroleum and often regular wicks have lead in them, putting toxic chemicals into your air. If you can find an organic soy candle with a cotton wick and scented with essential oils these may be a good option for you as well. Any synthetically scented candle will have fragrance in it putting out endocrine/ hormone-disrupting chemicals.
• If you have a wood-burning fireplace, be sure to keep your flue clean, burn wood that burns well to minimize smoke inhalation, and ventilate well.
• If you are a cigarette smoker trying to decrease toxins in your life, the most effective thing you can do is to quit smoking. Cigarette smoke is extremely toxic and will greatly increase your cadmium/ heavy metal levels inside your body interrupting all sorts of important bodily processes.

Change Your Furnace Filters

Change furnace filters in your home at least every three months. You may need to change it more frequently depending on the size of your house, if you have pets, or if any kind of smoking is happening inside including smoke from a wood stove.

• Furnace Filters

Clean Your Air Ducts

Cleaning your air ducts can make a huge difference in the air that comes into your house and into your lungs. This is a spendy, but worthwhile investment in your health.

Check for Mold

Be vigilant for signs of mold including water spots. You can have your home inspected for mold if you are concerned. Mold can have a detrimental effect on your health affecting your gut, lungs, immune system and so much more. If you have mysterious symptoms that you are unable to relate to a cause, mold is a common offender.

Minimize VOCs

• If something smells toxic or chemically, it is! Send it back or at least put it outside to off-gas for a while.
• Volatile organic compounds are found in furnishings, bedding, paints, glues, etc.
  • Paints: Look for zero VOC paints,but if you can’t find those at least buy paint with low VOCs. Open windows and ventilate during and after newly painting the inside of your home no matter what you use.
  • Look for low toxic glues, grouts, and home maintenance products.
  • Look for low toxic furniture and furnishings or buy second hand, which will have already off-gassed substantially if it is more than a few years old. These products will off-gas the most when they are brand new, so even a year old is better than new.
  • Buy organic bedding, mattresses, and pillows. Make your bedroom the priority if you are starting with one room at a time, as this is where we spend a substantial number of hours healing, repairing, and renewing in our sleep. With new toxins entering our bodies all the time, we are unable to do this job as well.

Eliminate or Minimize Flame Retardants

Flame retardants are super toxic and found on your furniture, your mattress and bedding, and even on your pajamas, among many other places.  Look for non-toxic options for furniture or buy second hand. Go for organic mattresses, bedding, and PJs if you really want to avoid these potent chemicals – see our blog post on LowToxifying your bedroom for more information and read our post about organic kids pajamas to learn more about the benefit of wearing clean PJs.

Minimize Effects of Natural Gas

If you have natural gas in your home, be aware of fumes from gas stoves, and fireplaces. Always run your fan or hood to clear the fumes, but beware this only clears about 25%, so opening windows and ventilating is crucial when cooking on a gas stove or running your gas fireplace.

• Open windows and ventilate
• Run your fan or hood while cooking
• Limit the use of gas fireplaces
• Get a carbon monoxide detector
• Regularly service your furnace to ensure it is working properly and not releasing increased levels of carbon monoxide into your home