The smell of fresh air
In our homes and outdoors, no matter where we go, the quality of air we breathe in is more and more questionable. With the pandemic, we have come to realise that being outside has massive benefits to our health and can greatly improve our day-to-day experiences. But we cannot spend our entire days outdoors, especially with the cold winter we have had in recent months. Air quality in your living space has become ever so important now, due to it having a large impact on one’s health and wellbeing when sitting at home for most of the day. This will be a basic guide to getting you started on making the air you breathe indoors cleaner.
Air purifiers
Air purifiers, devices literally used for making the air cleaner, are machines that are 0.5m wide boxes that are placed in the house. How they work is that they suck in pollutants like dust or pollen, which then go through the filter and in exchange are pushed back out as clean air.
Air purifiers come with filters which differ from model to model. These filters need to be frequently exchanged in order for the air purifier to work efficiently and capture pollutants in your home. As for the filters themselves, they can be reusable (but reusable filters need to be exchanged very often and with a lot of precision) and UV filters which can remove exceedingly small particles like moisture or bacteria. Lastly, there are also ionizers that are good at settling out the particles from the air and attracting them to the filters. It is worth keeping in mind that when buying an ionizer, it should not produce ozone because it can be damaging to your health.
Things to consider
So, air purifiers seem like a good option to have clean air in your house, right? Well, there are two things to consider when getting one. The cost of maintenance and cost of buying one will differ based on the quality and type you buy. Secondly, air purifiers need to be strategically positioned in the living space so that their effectiveness can be maximized, and this might be a problem in bigger households with many rooms or not much open space. Nevertheless, air purifiers do the job they are set out to do which is helping to clean the air from outside that could be harmful to you. With COVID-19 being able to stay present in the air for long periods of time, it is a good idea for it to be filtered out of your home environment.
But what if you do not want or need an air purifier to keep the air clean in your house?
Other methods you can use to clean your air
1. Open you window: Opening windows is one of the most sure-fire ways of letting fresh air into your house. However, this depends on the weather and the quality of air outside which could be harmful, at least if you open the windows for long periods of time (more than 1-2 hours). Do not freeze yourself to death just because you want fresh air in your house, that just does not make sense. Instead look to occasionally open a window in one room when you have stopped using it and also turn off your heating so that there is no energy that goes to waste. Another tip I can give is to open windows as far from each other as possible in a room to get a cross-draft and have a lot of air circulation in your entire home.
2. Use other equipment like fans or even a vacuum cleaner to blow away or suck up the unwanted particles that contaminate the air inside your home. Of course, use things like a fan in a specific season when it’s hot because blowing cold air onto yourself might not be desirable in the winter when it’s already cold.
3. Just go outside! Ok, this might seem obvious, however, it just might be a good idea to be aware that there are still disadvantages that come with going outside. Remember there is still a pandemic out there, and with the introduction of masks, many people have become complacent with their social distancing or the way they wear their masks (like just covering up their mouth and not their nose). Besides, smog is an ever-present problem and I advise you to be aware of the smog levels in your area by using the website: https://aqicn.org/map/warsaw/ which tells you the air quality in particular places in Warsaw. Bear these things in mind when going outside and you should be good to go!
The air we breathe is really vital to our everyday health and wellbeing and it is important to raise awareness that such a threat to your health actually exists. Of course, this might not be the biggest problem on your mind when it comes to health, however, it is crucial when considering the fact that on average we take 20,000 breaths per day.
“A breath of fresh air is a great thing to take and an even better thing to be”.
Oliver Wojtan
References:
2. https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/appliances/air-purifier-reviews/a25252001/do-air-purifiers-work/