Kevin R. Hart: Sustainable homes and the rise of sick home syndrome
Credit to Author: Stephen Snelgrove| Date: Sat, 05 Oct 2019 01:00:35 +0000
The fresh feeling that houseplants bring to a home is hard to beat. But is it anything more than a feeling?
Truthfully, it’s one of the many misconceptions that exist about the quality of the air we breathe inside our homes, and just how healthy (or, in many cases, unhealthy) it’s keeping us compared to the air outside. After all, it’s easy to recognize and avoid the threat of pillowing smoke outdoors, but significantly more complicated to detect mold and mildew spores in the air in your own home.
On average, studies are finding that indoor air pollution is anywhere between five to 10 times worse than outdoor air. Now consider that we spend upwards of 85 per cent of our time indoors, with the vast majority of that time spent in our homes. It’s no wonder Sick Home Syndrome and respiratory ailments like asthma are on the rise.
Coined in the 1980s, Sick Building Syndrome was used to describe the chronic headaches and respiratory problems that office workers developed due to unhealthy, poorly ventilated working environments.
Jump forward 40 years and we’re experiencing the rise of a new, but closely tied epidemic: Sick Home Syndrome. This might come as a surprise, given the emphasis and renewed focus on sustainability among many of Vancouver’s developers and the government (B.C. Energy Step Code, 2017). But, in truth, sustainability and good air quality are at odds with one another.
As homes across the city become increasingly energy-efficient, insulating us from the air outside, they’re also stripping our homes of fresh, uncompromised air. If your home was a balloon filled with air, it would be as if you were inhaling the air inside that balloon, along with the CO2 and other pollutants trapped within.
From headaches to sore throats and itchy eyes, and a lack of productivity and bad sleep, the effects of poor air quality are insidious and easy to attribute to things like the common cold. But no amount of Tylenol will take care of 20 years worth of mold and mildew buildup in your bathroom. It also won’t do anything to slow Canada’s creeping rates of new childhood asthma cases, or the global rise of mental illness, both of which have been linked to increases in air pollution.
The greatest threat to our health in the home is not getting enough fresh air. Have you ever wondered why the bathroom fan in newer condo buildings can’t be turned off? It’s because it acts as the unit’s primary source of air circulation — and while it’s not the most efficient solution, it does, nonetheless, succeed at moving the air.
It would be easy to point to real estate developers as the ones armed with the authority to improve air quality in our homes but, truthfully, they’re simply a cog in the wheel toward breathing better. Until building codes, which have the potential to improve air quality by 100 per cent, are updated to reflect homeowner sentiment, we will not see the development of homes that are consistently built to be both energy-efficient and designed with our health in mind. So what can you do?
Open your windows. At night or during the day, just open your windows. No amount of greenery around the home will replace the level of fresh air that’s on the other side of that glass pane. If energy consumption is your main concern, explore products like an Energy Recovery Ventilator, which will not only cut costs on your energy bill, but will restore your entire home with fresh air — and not just in the areas closest to your windows.
Kevin R. Hart, Founder and CEO of TZOA, a Vancouver company which provides complete solutions for indoor air quality.
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