Your Home Might Be Making You Sick. Here’s a Practical Guide to Cleaner Indoor Air
Wellness conversations usually revolve around what we eat, how we move, and the supplements we add to our routines. But according to indoor air quality expert Michael Rubino, one of the biggest influences on our health is something most people rarely think about: the environment inside their homes.
Michael Rubino has spent years raising awareness about the connection between our homes and our health. An indoor air quality expert and environmental wellness advocate, he is the founder of HomeCleanse and co-founder and Chair of Change the Air Foundation, organizations focused on helping people understand and improve the air inside their homes.
To better understand how the spaces we live in may be affecting our wellbeing, we spoke with Rubino about the hidden impact of indoor air and what people should pay attention to inside their homes.
We focus so much on food, supplements, and workouts. How does indoor air quality influence our health in ways that are just as significant, yet often overlooked?
The average person breathes around 20,000 breaths per day. Air is quite literally the greatest route of exposure we face. The average person also spends around 90 percent of their time inside, meaning that indoor air specifically plays a significant role in what our bodies are exposed to.
If that air contains a mix of VOCs, mold spores, pesticides, bacteria, and other contaminants, that will directly impact the body’s toxic load. Over time, this can quietly degrade someone’s wellness. Exposure to poor indoor air quality can trigger a wide range of potential health effects that span multiple systems throughout the body.
Due to the general lack of focus placed on indoor air quality in health conversations, many people are dealing with this health factor without even knowing it. All the diet changes, supplements, and workouts in the world will not provide their ultimate benefits if someone is still breathing toxic indoor air day after day.
Modernization has unfortunately not helped with this situation. Tightly built homes mean that there is less airflow between indoor and outdoor spaces. As a result, most contaminants that make their way inside remain there until they are forcibly removed.
When you add the introduction of man-made contaminants into indoor spaces, building errors that allow microbial growth, poor ventilation, and a lack of consistent industry standards regarding this issue, it creates the perfect storm for unhealthy indoor air quality.
By improving indoor air quality, we are directly supporting our bodies by reducing that toxic load and allowing them to operate as they are supposed to throughout the day.
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