In the 1800s, firefighters wore the name “smoke eater” with pride. The term represented a life spent running towards danger to save people and property from harm, regardless of the personal health risks.
Even though it’s really scary, air pollution Halloween costumes are rare due to the tendency for pollution to be invisible. This Halloween, Molekule set up a house of horrors haunted with pollutants to spread the word about the silent but violent threats lurking around your house.
Airborne Pathogens
When you think about the air quality in your home, you’re probably more focused on indoor air pollution than moisture content. However, the amount of water in the air, also known as relative humidity, can impact your health and home just as much (or more) than many types of air pollution.
Your skin is an adaptive whole-body protection organ that is constantly fending off attacks from all angles. But as we age, our skin will inevitably start to break down both for natural intrinsic reasons and environmental extrinsic reasons. Aging from outside and from within have been found to be tightly linked to oxidative stress, which is chemical stress on your body’s tissues. This stress ages your skin in many ways, including increasing inflammation, slowing healing, and causing cancer.
It takes a lot of plants to clean the air. A NASA study in 1989 found some interesting results when exposing plants to the air pollution chemicals known as volatile organic compounds (VOCs). It seemed that the plants in combination with the soil and soil microbes could reduce the amount of VOCs in the air.
A recent Harvard study estimated that fossil fuel emissions caused 8 million deaths in 2018. That means pollution from burning fossil fuels was responsible for almost 20% of all deaths that year. It is difficult to estimate the total worldwide health burden of air pollution, but many scholars agree that between 5 to 9 million people die from air pollution each year.
Everyone loves the welcome relief of a cool breeze on a hot summer day. When you are indoors, you have to rely on fans (or an air conditioner, which we talk about in another post) to create that breeze for you. Fans can increase airflow in a room and help you beat the heat.
Dry air can lead to a host of problems for your health and home. Chapped lips, dry skin, nosebleeds, and increased asthma and allergy symptoms can all be caused by a lack of moisture in the air. Low humidity can also lead to static electricity, peeling wallpaper, and cracks in your wooden furniture.
Wildfires have always contributed to air pollution. However, until recently, most particle pollution in the western United States was created by emissions from vehicles and industrial sources. With the drastic increase in wildfires over the past few years, wildfire smoke has risen to be one of the most abundant — and most dangerous — sources of air pollution in the nation.
Whether you want to decrease allergens in your home, get rid of a lingering bad odor, or remove unhealthy airborne chemicals, an air purifier can help improve your indoor air quality. However, not all types of air filtration can handle different types of pollutants found in a home. PECO technology, on the other hand, goes beyond traditional filtration methods to trap and destroy not only airborne particles and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), but also many different kinds of organic air pollution.
Smell is fundamental to our experience and linked with a variety of emotional responses. Some smells repel us, while some invite us in. They’re a vital part of our world and our survival strategy. Without smell we become more depressed and, conversely, when we’re depressed we can’t smell as well.