Improving Your Home's Air Quality During The Heating Season

Winter will officially start this month in northern-hemisphere countries, and that means we all spend around 90 percent of our time indoors on average — at work, at school, in shopping malls, in cars, and mostly at home. Most of us have already started heating our homes.

You may feel nice and toasty, but your source of heating may be harming your health, either directly or by circulating indoor pollution around all your rooms. How can you improve your indoor air quality?

Risks Of Gas Heaters

Gas heaters are a reliable source of heat, but they do require responsible care to avoid high levels of carbon monoxide in your home. Gas heaters should always be installed by a professional, and they should also be serviced regularly — ideally, every year before the heating season starts, but at least every two years. You should always contact your service immediately if the following red flags show up:

• The flames on your heater are orange instead of blue.

• You smell gas.

• You or other people living in your home have unexplained headaches, chest pain, shortness of breath, or are often nauseous. These symptoms should disappear when you are not at home if you have gas poisoning.

Families who heat their home with gas should always ventilate properly, by opening windows and doors regularly (at least 15 minutes every day), or having window fans installed. You can often partially clean your gas heater by taking it apart and vacuum cleaning the inside, but you obviously need to turn the gas off and make sure the section that contains the flames is sealed off properly once you are done.

Chimneys should be serviced regularly as well, preferably by a professional. Very high levels of carbon monoxide can quickly become fatal. If you feel you have a special reason to be concerned about the levels of carbon monoxide in your house, you can also obtain a carbon monoxide detector inexpensively and easily.

Note that unflued gas heaters pose additional risk. They emit toxic gases that accumulate very quickly unless your room is ventilated really well — in which case you'd be cold, so that defeats the whole object of heating. Basically, avoid unflued gas heaters.

Safely Using Wood Fire

Do you just love that cozy fireplace and choose to use it as an additional source of heating? Or do you rely on wood burning as your main heating? Using your fireplace properly and having your chimney serviced regularly still won't prevent you from breathing in some harmful substances in that case, unfortunately.

Wood that isn't burned properly, damp or wet wood, wood that was previously treated with harmful chemicals, and placing items like newspapers in your fireplace can all contribute to the presence of hazardous toxins in the air you breathe at home. Ash, or its fancy name “particle pollution”, is another health hazard. Children, elderly people, and those who are suffering from asthma or other chronic lung diseases are especially sensitive and may develop respiratory problems.

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) actually recommends replacing wood stoves and fireplaces with “cleaner and more efficient heating alternatives such as gas, oil, propane, or electric heat”. If you don't want to say good bye to your beloved fireplace, do make sure that the wood you burn is clean and dry, and sourced from a reputable company. If your fireplace is old and dirty, you should also think about replacing it with a newer, EPA-certified fireplace. Such a new fireplace is also very likely to be more energy-efficient, which means reducing your carbon footprint as well as enjoying a lower energy bill.

As with every form of heating, families who use wood burning to keep their homes heated should make proper ventilation a priority, have their stoves and fireplaces serviced yearly and their chimneys cleaned regularly.

Electric And Central Heating

Electric heaters do not emit any gases or make the air moist, and can therefore be regarded as one of the cleanest forms of heating — if you look strictly at the air quality they produce. Of course, electric heating is often more expensive than other types of heating available and there is always the possibility of an electric fire.

Electric heaters may circulate dust and other particles around your home, however. This should be addressed, but is not connected directly to your heater. In some countries, “thermo-accumulative heaters”, filled with bricks and glass wool, are popular. You don't want glass wool distributed throughout the air you breathe, as it can lead to long-term respiratory problems like coughing and irritated lungs. If your heater does contain glass wool, ensure that it has no way of being expelled through the rosters and into your air.

How about central heating? As you may have expected, it comes out as the least risky form of heating from all safety perspectives, including air quality. You can use a humidifier if you feel the air in your home is too dry, and that's about it. To find out if your air is too dry, you can buy an inexpensive humidity meter from Amazon or any other well-stocked online marketplace.

Shockingly, researchers from the University College London and the University of Cambridge did conclude that central heating may contribute to obesity rates. People have central heating feel so warm and comfortable that they become more sedentary and their body does not use additional calories to keep warm.

Consider An Ionizer

You know that wonderful, refreshing smell that fills the air outside after the rain has cleared up? That is the smell of negative ions, which have a positive effect on your health. Your home in winter is, on the other hand, more likely to be filled with lots of positive ions generated by home appliances — including your source of heating, as well smoke and dust.

An ionizer uses electricity to ionize molecules with a negative load. Negative ions will then attach themselves to the positive ions floating around your indoor air. They can either be sucked up into an air purifying system, or hoovered up as they fall to the floor and other flat surfaces. If you have an ionizer, vacuum clean often. Ionizers come as simple appliances (even in USB format!), or can be part of an air purifier, which is also highly recommended, no matter how you heat your home.

Ionizer-proponents say that the presence of one of these fellows will greatly reduce the amount of allergens and other harmful substances in a space. Even bacteria may be reduced in number. In the wake of the SARS crisis, many hospitals started using ionizers and research into their effects is still ongoing.

Having a shower is another great way to have more negative ions floating around your home. Leave your bathroom door wide open if you want the effects of your shower to spread further. Ionizers are said to be especially beneficial to people who are prone to asthma and allergies. Does it work? I am afraid you will have to try it out and judge for yourself.