Healthy Habits: Home Air Quality and Heart Disease

 

Our homes, offices and other shared spaces that we occupy play a significant role in our health, especially when it comes to heart disease. Factors like indoor air quality and chronic noise are often overlooked, so let’s take a look at how building design can lower our health risks for us and our families. 

Environmental specialist Douglas Mulhall and author of The Calcium Bomb, has uncovered that there is much more than what meets the eye when it comes to the causes of heart disease and other sicknesses. Our environment plays a significant role when it comes to our health, and the air quality in our homes plays a major role in the longevity of our lives.

“You've heard 'you are what you eat', but what about the air you breathe? If you're breathing toxic microparticles or mold then they become part of you. The following factors determine what gets into you when you're breathing the air where you work and live,” says Mulhall

Here Mulhall’s top three factors that affect the air quality in our homes:

Factor #1: Toxic microparticles
Every breath you take brings toxic microparticles into your lungs from gas cookers, fireplaces, smoke from outdoors, and the pollutants that are released from friction on everyday items like carpets, furniture coverings and clothing. Some of these penetrate your lung lining and get into your arteries, causing chronic inflammation that leads to heart disease and shortens your healthy longevity.

Factor #2: Energy savings spell indoor pollution
Energy efficient homes have a bad habit of concentrating pollutants from indoors and outdoors because the house is sealed. This traps carbon dioxide along with toxic gasses and particles. CO2 tends to worsen the effects of those toxins. Oddly, cleaning your home can make this worse if done using toxic cleaners.

Factor #3: Mold and you
In older homes and even newer ones, moisture gets trapped and mold forms, releasing toxic particles into the air. These lead to persistent infections that spark chronic inflammation. You’re also inhaling you. Every moment, you and your family and guests shed tiny particles that can build up and be inhaled. This is one cause of chronic infections. 

All of these can be fixed with proper air circulation, filtration and using the right materials and cleaners in your home.