Homeowner Newsletter: Spring 2020
©2020 Jeffrey C. May
Some of our clients are reaching out to us because due to the pandemic, they are spending more time in their homes and as a consequence are coughing, wheezing, or their noses are running.
For the immediate future, to protect ourselves and our clients, we are limiting our on-site appointments to spaces I can inspect when no one else is present: for example, houses that are unoccupied at the time, basements where I can enter and exit through the bulkheads, or rooms that people can vacate while I am there. But I am happy to answer questions you may have if you e-mail me (jeffrey.may@comcast.net). If you have a lot of questions, though, I may recommend that we speak over the phone.
Meanwhile, I’m dedicating this newsletter to a discussion of some steps you can take to help keep the air in your home free of contaminants, irritants, and allergens. Some of these steps were covered in my summer 2019 newsletter but given the situation we are all facing, they are worth repeating here.
1. Wash clothing and bedding in hot water and/or turn your dryer to the hot setting. This will kill dust mites (one of the major triggers for asthma and allergy symptoms worldwide) as well as denature many allergens.
2. Be sure that your dryer hose is intact and venting to the exterior. If there is lint behind your dryer, the hose may be leaking. Then a lot of moisture as well as laundry chemicals on lint can be introduced into your indoor air (and the moisture can lead to condensation and mold growth on cold surfaces).
3. If you are sitting down for extended periods of time, it’s better to use a leather- or vinyl-covered chair or sofa, which is not as conducive to a dust-mite infestation as fabric-covered furniture can be.
4. Kitchen-cabinet kick spaces collect dust and when dampened by floor mopping, can become moldy. Clean your kick spaces as needed. If you see spots of mold, wipe those surfaces with a dilute bleach solution (one part bleach to eighteen parts water) or with any suitable cleaning agent.
5. Use a vacuum with a HEPA (high efficiency particulate arrestance) filter (such as a Miele model), because conventional vacuums emit particles in the exhaust stream. And don’t use a bagless vacuum!
6. If your home-office is in your basement, move your work station to a table located above-grade (above ground level). Mold growth is common in both finished and unfinished basements in which the relative humidity has not been adequately controlled.
7. Jar candles produce a lot of soot particles that not only stain walls and ceilings but that are also unhealthy to inhale.
Now let’s move to more private subject: toilet habits.
1. Close your toilet seat before flushing to minimize bioaerosol (airborne particles from living things such as bacteria and viruses).
2. Ah, toilet paper! A pretty hard commodity to find these days. Try to make your supply of toilet paper last, because paper towels, napkins, and Kleenex do not disintegrate in water the way toilet paper does and can thus clog drain pipes.
I’m a chemist as well as an indoor air quality professional, so I’m wearing my “chemist” hat when sharing the following tips:
1. This is a good time to tackle some cleaning projects, but never mix ammonia-containing products with products that contain bleach, and never add vinegar-containing products to bleach. When such products are mixed together, highly toxic gases are produced.
2. Avoid using fragranced body and cleaning products as well as plug-in fragrance emitters. Fragrances may smell pleasant but they add to the chemical load in indoor air.
Anne Steinemann, Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Melbourne, Australia, authored a study titled “Volatile Organic Emissions from Common Consumer Products” (Air Quality, Atmosphere & Health, March 2015, http://link.springer.com). The study found that 37 common products, “including air fresheners, laundry products, cleaners, and personal care products” contained 156 volatile organic compounds (VOCs). “..knowledge of product composition can be an important step to understand, assess, and reduce potential exposures and effects.”
3. Scrubbing your hands with plenty of soap for at least 20 seconds can be very effective in killing microbes.
Our four books (published by Johns Hopkins University Press and available on Amazon) contain other recommendations.
My House is Killing Me: The Home Guide for Families with Allergies and Asthma is organized into specific areas of a home, and each chapter ends with a short list of “to do” steps. Edition 2 is scheduled to be published this coming fall and discusses new developments in the indoor-airquality (IAQ) field.
The Mold Survival Guide: For Your Home and for Your Health explains how you can search for mold growth in your home, where mold growth is most likely to occur and why, how to remove such growth, and how to prevent the mold from growing back.
My Office is Killing Me: The Sick Building Survival Guide focuses on larger office spaces as well as schools but could be helpful to those of you who work from home on a regular basis – a lifestyle more common in our technological age.
Jeff May’s Healthy Home Tips is a workbook that focuses on our recommendations and that contains space so you can keep track of the steps you take to clean up your indoor air.
I got into the IAQ field after our son was hospitalized for five days due to a severe asthma attack. I’ve been a building inspector and have an advanced degree in organic chemistry, so I decided to examine our home to see if there were any triggers present that could have sent our son to the hospital. What I found and the steps we took to rid our home of allergens drastically improved our son’s health, changed the way we lived, and sent me on a new professional path. So I know from personal experience that improving indoor environmental conditions has a beneficial effect on human health.