Are you suffering from headaches, congestion or fatigue? These symptoms could be caused by poor indoor air quality. Start monitoring your IAQ today.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the average American spends 93% of their time indoors. If you fall into this category, you are breathing indoor air for nearly every minute of your life, which means that the quality of that air is extremely important to your health. If you’ve been experiencing nagging health symptoms, such as persistent headaches or congestion, indoor air quality (IAQ) could very well be the culprit.
Health Effects of Poor IAQ
Breathing in an environment with poor IAQ can have numerous short-term and long-term effects on your health, including:
- Persistent headaches
- Dizziness
- Extreme fatigue
- Respiratory congestion
- Itchiness or irritation in eyes, nose or throat
Exposure to certain pollutants can also cause long-term health effects, including respiratory disease, cancer and heart complications. The importance of monitoring IAQ, both in the home and in the workplace, cannot be emphasized enough.
What Controls IAQ?
The IAQ in your home or office is largely controlled by the performance of your HVAC system. There are many conditions that can negatively affect your system’s performance, such as microbial growth and moisture. Microbial growth can be increased by the presence of heat and humidity, which can cause dust particles and other pollutants to become trapped in your HVAC system and spread throughout your building.
Regular HVAC Maintenance
There are a few simple maintenance steps you can take to prevent these issues in your HVAC system and maintain a healthy and balanced IAQ:
- Clean your HVAC system regularly
- Replace your HVAC filter every month
- Install an ultraviolet light in your HVAC system—UV lamps can reduce microbial growth
Consistent IAQ Monitoring
While you need to ensure that your HVAC system is performing optimally, you also want to monitor your IAQ on a regular basis. There are software systems that are designed specifically to continuously monitor a building’s IAQ. These systems are able to monitor, in real-time, the temperature and humidity of a building as well as the presence of various pollutants and noxious gases, including carbon dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, Sulphur dioxide, ozone and ammonia, among others.
These systems not only monitor various elements of IAQ, they set appropriate standards for each of these elements so that when any imbalance is detected, the HVAC system’s heating or cooling elements are triggered appropriately in order to maintain optimum IAQ.
There are many elements involved in maintaining optimum IAQ in your home or office but the long-term benefits of doing so will far outweigh the work upfront. At MightyServ, we do that work for you, evaluating your building’s IAQ and putting systems in place to ensure that you experience the benefits of optimum air quality for years to come. Call us today or fill out a contact form to schedule an IAQ evaluation and follow us for more HVAC tips.
