Written by Hans Augustenborg
June 10, 2024 — 5 minute reading time
For many of us, the air swirls with health-harming particles from cooking fumes, candles, wood stoves, and the air we exhale ourselves.
Many of us also have problems with poor acoustics and noise disturbances, just as poor lighting can affect our indoor environment.
Indoor air quality encompasses all sensory impressions that affect your body when you are indoors.
But how do you improve indoor air quality? When is indoor air quality good? And how do you detect when it's poor? Find out here, where you'll also get 3 important tips.
When Is Your Indoor Air Quality Good?
Air, light, and sound. All three contribute to creating the environment we inhabit indoors – which can either be good or bad.
Good indoor air quality depends on:
- Air quality with low CO2 levels and optimal humidity
- Minimal noise disturbances and good acoustics
- Optimal lighting
We primarily focus on air quality and its impact on indoor climate – and therefore, that's what we focus on here because it bears a large part of the responsibility for good indoor air quality.
If you want better indoor air quality, you can start by improving air quality.
How?
You need to prioritize proper ventilation. Ventilation and indoor air quality are inextricably linked.
If you ventilate enough, you lower the CO2 level in the air while also improving humidity.
Why Air Quality Is Important for Your Health and Safety
"The public and regulatory authorities have finally begun to wake up, and many more now understand that indoor air has a tremendous impact on our health and well-being."
So says Joseph Allen, a lecturer at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, in an interview in Weekendavisen.
For too long, we have overlooked indoor air quality in the big health puzzle. But fortunately, it is now beginning to be considered an important piece. And here, air quality is one of the crucial factors.
The air in your home is often more polluted than along the busiest city streets, the article continues in Weekendavisen. Because when we light wood stoves, cook, and create coziness at home with candles, it releases a myriad of harmful particles.
This increases the CO2 level and worsens the air quality in your home. And since we spend 90% of our time indoors, we inhale many of these health-harming particles.
Poor Indoor Air Quality and Symptoms
How do you know if air quality contributes to poor indoor air quality in your home?
What we can't see, we don't pity, goes an old saying. But when it comes to poor indoor air quality, we actually do pity it because it can affect us in a variety of ways.
It can be difficult to spot poor air quality with the naked eye – and therefore, it can quickly slip into the back of our minds.
Nevertheless, you can keep an eye out for a range of symptoms and thus poor indoor air quality.
Physical symptoms:
- Headaches
- Fatigue
- Nausea and dizziness
- Dry mucous membranes in the eyes, nose, and throat
- Asthma and allergies
Symptoms in your home:
- Growth of mold
- Poor, stale, and "musty" smell
- Condensation on the inside of windows
Unfortunately, poor indoor air quality is an invisible problem that you rarely can see or feel. Birdie feels it in its own body when the oxygen in the air becomes poor and the CO2 level high, by collapsing dead.
It surprises many how quickly it goes from flying to collapsing. Even if they believe their ventilation habits are good, and their health or home shows no signs of poor air quality.
3 Ways to Improve Your Air Quality
Do you want to give your indoor air quality the health focus it deserves?
Here are 3 effective tips on how to create better air quality, which plays an important role in the indoor environment in your home.
Proper Ventilation
Most of us ventilate every day. But only a small portion does it in the most effective way.
WHO and the Danish Health Authority recommend ventilating with cross-ventilation at least three times a day for 5-10 minutes.
Only about 25% do it.
You need to open the windows well on each side of your home to create the necessary cross-ventilation. If you don't, too little of the old, polluted air is exchanged with new, clean air.
Maintain the Right Humidity
The humidity in the air plays a crucial role in creating a better indoor environment.
Humidity tells you how much water the air contains. And it should contain neither too much nor too little. If there is too little moisture in the air, it will become dry. Conversely, if there is too much, the humidity will be too high.
The optimal humidity is between 40-60%, but it depends on the season. This means that humidity should be lower in the winter months, while it will naturally rise in the summer months.
Here, ventilation is also the way to achieve a stable humidity level.
Also, remember always to close the bathroom door when you've been showering – and avoid drying clothes indoors. Both will reduce the humidity in your home.
Lower the CO2 Level
When we breathe in the air, the amount of CO2 around us increases. Especially if many people are gathered indoors, the CO2 level will rise explosively.
The CO2 level worsens the air quality in your home – and therefore, you should keep it down.
Both the CO2 level and humidity will find their proper balance if you remember to ventilate properly.
Birdie helps keep track of ventilation
Birdie helps you improve your indoor air quality by reacting when the CO2 level becomes too high. That way, you get a clear signal that the air quality is poor.
It prompts you to ventilate and gives you all the other benefits of ventilation, as you improve humidity and "flush out" the other health-harming particles.
In the Danish newspaper Weekendavisen, Pawel Wargocki, a lecturer at DTU Sustain, says:
"We should think of clean air as we think of clean water and fresh food. We don't compromise on those, and we shouldn't compromise on indoor air quality either."
With Birdie, you get help to take both your health and safety seriously.
