Real Estate, your Home and Wellness

Feeling sick? Your home might be the culprit
When you think about wellness within your walls, what comes to mind? No, we’re not talking about the great lengths you go to in maintaining sanitary hygiene all around your home, with the very best of clean, disinfection, vacuuming and fumigation. This is way beyond that, as is illustrated by the story of an Atlanta based interior designer, Jillian Pritchard Cooke.

 

Thirteen years ago, interior designer Jillian Pritchard Cooke was working on the first LEED-for-home house in Atlanta. LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is a green building designation supported by the U.S. Green Building Council. Pritchard Cooke was engaged with designing the home, called Eco Manor, from an environmental and sustainable approach. She had been working hard and felt stressed and tired. She soon discovered that she had a rare tissue cancer, which her doctors’ thought might have an environmental cause rather than anything genetic.

 

“As an interior designer, I had been putting myself in harm’s way,” Pritchard Cooke says. “For years I had been walking into homes where toxins are at a high level.

 

Pritchard Cooke, now 60, underwent radiation and chemotherapy. She has spent the years since her diagnosis changing not only her home environment—for example, getting rid of products that had toxic materials in them—but in creating Wellness Within Your Walls, an organization that educates and certifies trade professionals, manufacturers and consumers.

 

Real Estate, your Home and Wellness

Your home might have become home, not just to you and your family, but to dangerous air toxins. Indoor air quality is consistently ranked as a major environmental risk to public health. The quality of the air you breathe can have a big impact on your health. Studies have tied poor outdoor air quality to lung cancer, strokes and heart disease. In fact, air pollution causes 3.3 million deaths worldwide each year, according to the Harvard School of Public Health. There’s an increased risk of what is now referred to as the “tight box syndrome,” in which toxins become trapped inside homes and buildings due to poor ventilation. As the air inside your home and indoor spaces is typically even more polluted than the air outside, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). And research shows we spend most of our time indoors, which is all the more reason to start cleaning our indoor air.
Asides dangerous toxins filtering into our homes, indoor air pollution can also come from dust (some is shed from garment fibers), lead from wall paint or drinking water; formaldehyde from pressed wood products, combustion sources, or even clothing; and smoke from residential wood, cheap candles, or incense burning, among many, many others.

It has become imperative that real estate/industry professionals, consumers, and especially homeowners stay enlightened and crucially aware of the most important aspect of their wellness journeys, and as such should constantly seek ways to improve healthy home solutions and clean, purified personal spaces. Ultimately this will promote health and wellness and leave a legacy of increasing life expectancy.

So how can you naturally and organically improve the air quality in your home without the use of chemicals?

Open your windows.

 It’s the simplest (and cheapest) thing you can do to improve your indoor air quality. Open your windows for even just five minutes a day to alleviate the accumulation of harmful air pollutants in your indoor air.

 

Spruce up your décor with houseplants. 

Having indoor houseplants can help improve indoor air quality, according to a study published by the American Society for Horticultural Science. For example, spider plants are effective at reducing benzene, formaldehyde, carbon monoxide and xylene.

 

The use of air fresheners.

You spray some air freshener to freshen up the air in your home, and then you calmly take a deep breath to inhale the lavender, lemon-infused scent. But beware: You are probably also taking in some volatile organic compounds (VOCs)—substances that can irritate your eyes, nose, and throat, damage your central nervous system and other organs, and might even be carcinogenic. Unfortunately, VOCs—which ideally are the first and easiest things to detox from your home—come not only from typical air fresheners, but also from paints and building supplies, toilet deodorizers, mothballs, other aerosol spray products (e.g., hairspray, aerosol sunscreen), chlorine bleach, detergent, cheap candles, and dry-cleaning chemical residues.

 

Opt for essential oil diffusers

Some essential oils, like tea tree oil, have antibacterial properties and can be added to homemade household cleaners or even applied topically to your skin to treat a small cut. But did you know these oils also can reduce airborne bacteria? Essential oils like eucalyptus, clove and rosemary have been proven to help reduce the number of dust mites in your house, too.

Beeswax candles only. The reason particles float in the air around us is because they are positively charged ions. The air is cleaner in the woods, or near a waterfall, for example, because nature creates negative ions, which bind to the positive ions, causing them to be heavier and fall to the ground. Burning pure beeswax candles artificially creates this phenomenon indoors, cleaning the indoor air. However, burning any kind of candle still sends soot up into your air. To avoid that completely, consider LED candles, which will pollute the airless and reduce the risk of a fire.

 

Take your shoes off. The dirt outside can carry some really yucky stuff: pesticides, pollen, fungi, bacteria or feces, for example. When you walk inside your house, any or all of that could be on the bottom of your shoes, so it’s best to take them off when you get inside. It’ll help keep your air cleaner — not to mention your floors.

 

Run the AC.

If you have central air conditioning, you already have a whole-house air filtration system at your disposal. It works by pulling air out of your house, cooling it and pumping it back in. Most systems have a filter that you need to change regularly, and this filter can trap particles while it does its job. The more you change it, the better. Find out what kind of AC system you have and what the recommendations are for changing your filters.

 

Clean with nontoxic chemicals.

Many store-bought household cleaners contain toxic chemicals that can cause eye, nose, throat and lung irritation. If you’re going to use these, at least open windows while you do. But as a greener option, consider making your own household cleaners using ingredients such as vinegar, baking soda, citrus juice or essential oils.

 

Use an air purifier.

Air purifiers can be an effective way to reduce harmful particles in the air. If your child has asthma, it may be worthwhile to have one in his room. Find out which one is right for you using the EPA’s guide.

 

Get rid of mould.

This fungus releases spores into the air that can trigger allergy symptoms. It likes to grow in dark, damp places, such as your bathroom, laundry room and basement.

 

Air out new furniture.

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are chemicals that linger in the air, and they are everywhere in our homes. VOCs such as tolulene and benzene are found in things like glues, paints, fabrics, construction materials and more. When you buy a new sofa or armchair, know this: It will emit VOCs, more heavily at first and then taper off. To reduce the harm to your indoor air, air out as much as possible to allow VOCs to escape. If you can, keep it in your garage for a week, or at least keep the windows in that room open most of the day for the first few months.

 

Use cooking oils with higher smoke points. To avoid a kitchen filled with smoke and a lingering smell of burnt oil wafting through your house for hours, use cooking oil that smokes at higher temperatures. Extra virgin olive oil has a lower smoke point compared to avocado, peanut, safflower, canola, corn and sunflower oil. If you prefer the taste of olive oil, you can use light olive oil, which has been refined and has a smoke point of 486 degrees Fahrenheit compared to 410 degrees for extra virgin olive oil.

In implementing the aforementioned, you’d be exposed to minimal environmental and health impacts, keep your home properly detoxed of harmful chemicals, and are well on your way towards building for yourself an eco-sanctuary that you can return to every night for true rejuvenation and worry-free relaxation.

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