Breathing in air that fills our lungs, blood, and brain with the proper oxygen levels is essential in keeping a person alive and healthy. Beyond the human experience, the air plays a crucial role in all aspects of life and every ecosystem that exists on earth. Trees, plants, animals, and the atmosphere’s protective elements all require a healthy balance of the right things in the air. Unfortunately, due to rapid human developments, this balance can be disrupted, resulting in profound and unsettling damage done to all life forms. The following will explore a few of the ways clean air solutions can help create greener living for everyone, plants, animals, and humans alike.
Volatile Organic Compounds
It might surprise you to learn that indoor air is up to ten times more polluted than outdoor air. Thousands of contaminants contribute to this startling realization, but one of the most serious is volatile organic compounds (commonly referred to as VOCs). VOCs are usually industrial solvents such as fuel oxygenates, trichloroethylene, or by-products of the chlorination used in most water treatment facilities.
Studies have shown that VOCs exist in equal measure in both urban and rural indoor environments. VOCs are easily inhaled and can result in many profound health implications. In the shorter term, nausea, visual disorders, headaches, dizziness, and eye and respiratory tract irritations can occur. In the long term, memory loss, damage to the liver, loss of coordination, kidney damage, chronic fatigue, cancer, central nervous system damage, and extensive irritation to the eyes, nose, and throat can occur. VOCs wreak havoc on the environment as well. Clean air solutions and reducing VOC materials and substances can work in tandem to help keep all parts of your being functioning optimally.
The Air Is Shared By Everyone
Air moves quickly worldwide through biochemical and geochemical processes that are continually rearranging and recycling the air. Right now, you are probably inhaling the air from Julius Caesar’s last gasp in 44 AD. Reducing the toxins in the air where you are can also reduce toxins for everyone and everything on earth now and in the future. That’s a pretty big responsibility.
Given that air moves so far, so quickly, and we are constantly adding chemicals and solvents to it, it’s high time we started doing as much as we can to reduce the toxicity of our air. Experts at TOPAIR emphasize this is particularly crucial for workplaces that deal with gases and substances known to release toxic fumes. This is important not only in the short term when it comes to your employees’ health, but long term for the health of everyone.
Allergens, Mold, Mildew, Smoke, And Dust
When we think of air being unclean, we usually imagine dusty or smoky air with things that make us cough or sneeze inside of it. Mold and mildew also have serious health implications, and their spores are not easy to see. Particularly if someone has seasonal allergies or asthma, opening the window to let in fresh air from outside isn’t always the best solution. Likewise, if you live in a big city with lots of pollution, this might make the air feel worse. Clean air systems tend to include filters that reduce the prevalence of these things in the air, meaning everyone inside can breathe a little easier. There are even filters designed specifically for people who are highly sensitive to particles in the air due to medical conditions, allergies, asthma, or an increased awareness of inflammation in their own bodies.
Protecting Those Who Can’t Speak For Themselves
Pets, local wildlife, and small children are often not equipped to understand or express that the air is making them itchy or swollen. They might not even know that’s what is going on. Studies have shown that children who don’t breathe well at home (especially while sleeping) have massive disadvantages in later life. Their ability to focus and learn while doing homework, their athletic performance, their ability to handle stress, the restful element of their sleep, and the growth of their jaw and dental configuration can be impacted. Remember, children breathe in 50% more air per pound of body weight than adults. Their lungs and immune system aren’t fully developed yet with means they are more susceptible to damage from poor air.
The above information should get you started on the long road that is the fight for clean air for everyone. It is essential that if you feel like the air where you are is dangerous for any reason (taste, smell, sudden dizziness, headaches, or possible toxic contaminants), leave the area immediately and contact your local poison control center.