We spend 90% of our time indoors - working, relaxing, doing household tasks, or spending time with our friends and family. All the while, we pay hardly any attention to the air we breathe. Except, perhaps, for throwing the windows open once in every while to let in a breeze.
Even if you're diligent about airing out rooms periodically, a stunning number of pollutants, gases, and particulates still lowers indoor air quality. According to research published by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), these range from carbon monoxide and the radioactive gas radon to secondhand smoke and volatile organic compounds.
All these pollutants affect your health - from causing relatively benign acne to promoting lung cancer.
But if even airing out rooms is not enough to boost indoor air quality - which is the case especially if you live in an urban area - what can you do? The answer may lie in air purifiers.
These machines do exactly as their name suggests. They purify air, either through filtering it and keeping back pollutants, or by releasing negatively charged ions that bind and neutralize harmful substances.
Here are five benefits that air filtration has for your home, health, and family.
1 - Alleviating Allergies and Asthma
To begin with, if someone in your family is allergic to airborne substances like pollen or animal hair, air purifiers can capture these and help avoid allergic reactions. Air purifiers can also help remove some triggers of asthma attacks, such as mold and dust particles.
2 - Capturing Pollutants
If you're living in a city, you've probably opened the window to let in some fresh air, only to be hit in the face with a cloud of exhaust fumes. If you're living in an intensively farmed area, you might have been greeted by pesticides instead. In both cases, air purifiers can capture the polluting particles - from nitrogen oxides and chemical pest-killers to particulate matter and ambient ozone.
With fewer pollutants in the air, the inflammatory processes they cause will be eased. The human immune system is incredibly responsive, and breathing polluted air can kick it into overdrive. Some effects of such low-level but constant inflammatory processes are acne, nervous strain, and insomnia.
3 - Getting Rid of Insects
Some models of air purifiers can also help you to get rid of insects. Mosquitos, flies - any of the annoying little buzzers that disturb your sleep at best, and at worst can carry illnesses such as Malaria or the Zika virus.
4 - Reducing Radon and Asbestos
Depending on where you live and how old your home is, you might be struggling with issues such as radon gas, or asbestos in your walls, ceilings, and roof. Air purifiers can capture both substances, significantly reducing the health risks they present.
5 - Improving Concentration and Productivity
Finally, having pollutant-free air in your home can help you breathe more deeply and easily. This means that oxygen will be delivered more effectively into your lungs and bloodstream. Overall, more oxygen will leave you feeling more awake, energetic, and concentrated.
In addition, the purring of air purifiers is also a calming kind of white noise, which can improve sleep quality.
Finally, the negative ions that some models of air purifiers disperse have also been linked to mood-improving effects.
Breathing Easy
Breathing is a central process of life. But for all that, people rarely spare a thought on it - except perhaps for practitioners of yoga, and women in labor.
But by paying attention to the quality of the air you breathe, and if necessary investing in an air purifier to boost that quality, you can reap considerable benefits for your - and your family's - health and happiness.
