How Cooking Impacts Your Home’s Indoor Air Quality

There are some everyday actions that hurt a home’s indoor air quality but are overlooked by homeowners because of how essential they are. One such action is cooking. Your eating habits inform the types of pollutants that get into your indoor air. Cooking anything from a piece of toast to chocolate chip cookies leads to differing levels of particulate matter and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) entering your air. Knowing what these pollutants are can help you take steps to improve your indoor air. How Different Cooking Sources Contribute to Indoor Air Pollution Cooking any amount or type of food will cause pollutants to enter your indoor air. However, the effects shouldn’t be harmful if your home is properly filtered. If your home is outfitted with gas ovens and cooktops, you will perform combustion of fossil fuels every time you cook. Any type of cooking that involves combustion is more harmful than non-combustion cooking methods like microwaves and electric ovens. When you use an electric oven and cooktop, your home shouldn’t become too polluted. However, a small concentration of harmful particles can still enter your indoor air. When you engage in methods of cooking like frying tortillas and stir-frying, particulate matter...

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Minimizing Exposure to Indoor Air Pollution

It’s important to reduce your exposure to pollutants that can build up in your home. Particles, bacteria, and vapors can all negatively affect your health, Unfortunately, they can be found in large quantities indoors, especially during the winter. Taking steps to keep the air in your home as clean as possible is vital to the overall health of everyone living in a building. Sources of Indoor Air Pollution Damaging particles and vapors can enter the home through a variety of sources. Personal care products can release vapors, pets can create dander, and mold can grow in moist areas. All of these can make asthma worse and cause a variety of respiratory illnesses. Other sources of indoor air pollution are radon seeping in through cracks in the foundation and building materials from recent construction. Even new furnishing and paint can release harmful volatile organic compounds. Improving Your Indoor Air Quality There are many ways that you can keep the air in your home clean and safe. The best thing to do is to bring in as much fresh air as possible. This can be done by opening windows and doors and encouraging air circulation. Even in the winter, opening a window...

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