Checking, Testing, and Improving Indoor Air Quality

One lasting change due to the pandemic is the new work culture that involves working from home more often. Our families are spending more time indoors and this raises an important question: how clean is the air inside the home? Climate change is leading to increased wildfires and temperature fluctuations that threaten the quality of the air we breathe.

Most weather reports give you the outdoor Air Quality in your area, but do you have any idea what the Air Quality inside your home is? Medical grade air quality monitoring solutions have been available but are beyond the means of consumers.

Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) is a new trend in measuring how good the air is indoors. The increase in pollutants inside our home such as harmful ones like VoCs (volatile organic compounds) and CO2 levels directly affects our health and mental alertness. Humidity also affects our eyes and skin causing dryness and irritations. Recent innovations in technology have led to consumer affordable sensors that are able to measure IAQ, CO2 Equivalent, Humidity, and Barometric pressure.

There is a significant benefit to having such sensing capabilities integrated in an everyday product like the light smart switch which is ubiquitous in a home. They help to monitor the air quality inside the home and are able to provide information on when you should vent the house and allow fresh air inside. If the outdoor air quality is poor, you can always choose to install more advanced air-filtration system like HEPA to improve the indoor air quality. If you use too much heating it might make the air dry. Indoor humidity monitoring can inform you if humidifiers would assist in maintaining comfortable levels. Vice Versa if you are in a humid area, choosing to use dehumidifiers may be beneficial. With humidity sensing being reported you can make more informed decisions.

Additionally, with these new inexpensive sensing technologies, you can track CO2 Equivalent level as well as IAQ level, this is especially important when many people are in smaller areas of the home.