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Think your house is clean as a whistle? You might be surprised
by The Lowell Sun
I always thought of myself as fastidious. Bed sheets are changed each week. Dirty dishes don't fester in the sink. We vacuum regularly and thoroughly. So just how funky could our home be?
Rich Lemoine, assistant director of environmental health and safety at UMass Lowell, brought a hard-drive sized box to keep tabs on the stuff we were breathing. The five-pound, near-$18,000 box hummed for 24 hours in the middle of our great room, sucking in two liters of air each minute to sample for fungus, mold, and official sounding stuff called VOCs, or volatile organic compounds.
It was an odd houseguest. I'd occasionally pass, holding my breath (it measured carbon dioxide, too): 3,146,479 small particles per cubic foot, it read. 1.3 parts per liter of radon. More than 7,600 large particles per cubic foot.
Wanting to make a good impression, we'd just cleaned prior to its arrival. Where was all this stuff?
Three of us live upstairs in this brick two-family in two bedrooms, with four rugs, an electric stove, one bathroom, a bunch of newer windows and two cats. Trees line our street, and there are expansive lawns up the way. But there's also a busy road down the hill that courses with traffic pretty much all day.
The green, mossy spots on the exterior brick, below the bathroom window -- something I thought was charming -- apparently isn't. And that small bit of black muck that creeps up the walls at the back of our bedroom closet? Not bad, necessarily, but definitely mold, Lemoine said.
Given all my back-patting about our home's stellar hygiene, getting Lemoine's final readings was startling -- and surprising. He pointed out several "areas of concern," including carbon dioxide levels, large particulate (anything from dust mites to cat hair) and small particulate (anything less than 2.5 microns in size). Our house, he said, was "tight."
He also pointed out the presence of some nasty-sounding spores -- Basidiospores and Penicillim-Aspergillus types -- which, while spooky, are apparently normal. And he gave us some advice.
Visually appealing doesn't necessarily mean clean. Houseplants don't actually improve indoor air. Closed windows -- especially the new, double-paned replacement kind we have -- can cut off a home's circulation. And books, magazines, even that pile of mail waiting to be opened can shrug off microscopic cellulose to make indoor air a cocktail of particulate.
Cleaning agents -- from our aerosol can of Pledge to the bathroom Soft Scrub -- toss volatile organic compounds into the air. So can your everyday cleaning materials, like the Clorox wipes we used on the countertops to the high chair. And the fewer rugs the better.
For those of you not quite willing to chuck your cleaning products, your pets, carpeting, your lackluster vacuuming habit, there are a few basic no-brain solutions, too.
Leaving your shoes, for instance, at the front door. Cleaning wet -- like mopping -- rather than dry (just vacuuming or Swiffering). Using citrus-based cleaners rather than more harsh cleaning, antibacterial or bleaching agents. And, say, once a week, shutting off the heat and throwing open the windows.
"The bottom line is what you can't see can make a difference in our quality of life and personal environment," Lemoine said.
| http://www.lowellsun.com/lifestyles/ci_4536120 # # # Pure Air Control Services 1-800-422-7873
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