Thursday, June 16, 2016

How to Assess Indoor Air Quality?

In our day-to-day life, we experience a variety of risks associated to our health. From driving cars, flying in airplanes, to engaging in recreational activities or just sitting at home—we are prone to environmental pollutants that may cause harm to our health.

Over the past decade, a growing number of scientific bodies have greatly indicated air within our homes and building can be highly polluted as compared to the outdoor air quality. While it is also estimated that 90% of the time is spent indoors. Therefore, people are exposed to indoor air pollutants for a longer period of time than they actually think.

Around 2.7 percent of the world’s burden of disease is due to indoor air quality, one of them is  poor respiratory disease. Studies by scientist around the world have linked majority of asthma related problems directly to the bad indoor air quality.

How can you assess indoor air quality?

A primary cause of indoor pollutants is through the gases and particles released in the air. This air, without adequate ventilation, remains inside the homes and buildings. To combat this issue, you can perform various indoor air quality assessments yourself, or by employing an external party and eliminate the sources of bad indoor air quality.

Air quality monitoring systems for a healthy environment: Formal analysis

·        If you live in a home, or work in a closed environment, then you can make use of air quality monitoring equipments that measures the temperature, humidity, carbon di oxide, and carbon monoxide and air particles. These are also some of the primary factors that help to evaluate the environmental quality.

·        Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC) is declared to be fatal for humans by the World Health Organization. Other analytic methods used to eliminate these compounds are through the use of chromatography. The two popular options include high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and gas chromatography (GC). Both of them can be used to identify any hazardous and toxic pollutants in the air.

·        Flame ionization detector is another most widely used method for air analysis. While the PID (photoionization detector) is used to target at compounds with ionization potentials that are present at certain boundary limits. 

·        NPD (Nitrogen phosphorous detector) is exclusively used to detect nitrogen and phosphorous present in the environment.

·        Analytical methods offers air samplings on site detections. This method is different than other formal techniques as it is sensitive to the limits of quantification. 

Indoor air quality assessment kit/tools

An indoor air quality assessment kit can be used against common threats inside homes and buildings. This tool will detect most of the containment and allergies that you are testing for. However, to conduct the air quality assessment with kits/tools available, ensure that these are verified by the Environment Protection Agency in the US. 


The selection of the best appropriate tool can help you identify if your house or building is present with any indoor pollutants that could be harmful for you and your family.  

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