ALERT! Here’s what happened.
When my friend Martha, of Dallas, Texas, came home exhausted after a long weekend away, she opened the kitchen door and found herself ankle deep in water. Her home was flooded. It hadn’t even rained. The culprit: a broken toilet.
Something to consider.
Tip #1 – Test your home for radon.
Contractors will be in Martha’s home replacing carpets and walls. This is a convenient time for her to check the radon level in her home. If it is above the US EPA recommended level of 4 pCi/L installing a remediation system when everything is torn apart makes sense.
Do you know the radon number for your home? Everyone should. This can be as important to your health as your HDL/LDL cholesterol and weight. Elevated radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer. It results in about 20,000 deaths per year in the US, and you won’t know there’s a problem for years.
Elevated radon levels can be found in homes anywhere in the country, with or without basements. Your home may be fine, and your neighbor’s home may have elevated levels. Therefore everyone should test.
Tip #2 – Control moisture and humidity.
A relative humidity of 30 to 50% is generally recommended. Anything above that where there is standing water, water-damaged materials, or wet surfaces serves as a perfect breeding ground for biological contaminants such as mold, mildew, bacteria, and dust mites. Many of these are small enough to be inhaled.
Tip #3 – Beware of adding new VOC’s to your home: paint, flooring, furniture
VOCs, or volatile organic compounds, vaporize or become a gas at room temperature. Eliminate them from inside your home as much as possible to reduce potential health problems such as allergies, asthma, cardiovascular disease, reproductive disorders, and some forms of cancer. Some VOCs dissipate quickly, such as when using cleaning products.
Paint: Other VOCs such as paint, create high VOC levels, emit only half of its VOCs in the first year, and then continue to release VOCs for years. Choose paints with low or no-VOCs by checking for ratings and information from reliable sources. Talk to your painting contractor to make sure that she or he is happy with the performance and coverage of the paint you have selected.
Flooring: There are several ways that VOCs are present in flooring. Many carpet backings contain glues with formaldehyde which will ‘offgas’ VOCs for years. Adhesives used to attach flooring materials to the subflooring and floor finishes can produce VOCs. Floorings to consider include laminate, cork or bamboo that is certified as low-VOC.
Furniture: Often furniture is not made from real wood, but pressed wood with adhesives containing urea-formaldehyde (UF) resins. Enormous amounts of those unhealthy resins are present in particleboard (sub-flooring, shelving, cabinetry, furniture), hardwood plywood paneling (decorative wall covering, cabinets, furniture), and medium-density fiberboard (drawer fronts, cabinets, and furniture tops).
High indoor temperatures or humidity can increase the release of formaldehyde from products, especially when they are new. Formaldehyde emissions generally decrease as products age.
TAKE ACTION! Here’s the good news about what you can do.
Here are two other sources to use when evaluating how paints, flooring, furniture, and other products may affect your home’s indoor air quality.Become familiar with The Greenguard Environmental Institute which works to improve indoor air quality and reduce chemical exposure. GREENGUARD Certified products have been screened for over 10,000 chemicals by an independent third-party organization and are listed in the Greenguard Product Guide. Use this as a resource when selecting new products that you bring into your home. If a product is not rated low or no-VOC, consider an alternative.
- Consumer Reports
- Material Safety Data Sheet via an online search using (name of paint) MSDS.
When you do bring new products into your home, the US EPA suggests:
- Use air conditioning to maintain moderate temperature.
- Use dehumidifiers to reduce humidity.
- Increase ventilation, particularly after bringing new sources of formaldehyde into your home.
There are many new products which are designed with healthier indoor air in mind, so now you can restore your home in a way that will make it healthier for all who live there.
