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The Importance of Indoor Air Quality

Date Published: 10/30/2020 [Source]

Headlines have been howling for months about COVID-19 and the wildfires that have ravaged Colorado, the Pacific Northwest and California. What these two disparate disasters highlight is the need for optimum indoor air quality; both present major health risks.

Radon Risk

One under-appreciated air quality risk is radon exposure. Like carbon monoxide, radon is an invisible, odorless gas that can kill you. CM does it fairly quickly; radon does it slowly as the second leading cause of lung cancer after smoking.

A decade or so ago, there was a lot of hype about the radon risk of granite countertops, (driven heavily by competitive products). Experts say that the risk is low in this regard, but it's not when it comes to basement and first floor living areas, since radon can be found in soil, particularly in some regions of the U.S.

Radon testing kits let you know if a space is impacted and radon detectors can alert you on your phone to dangerous levels. With so many more people spending extra time indoors working at home, exercising at home, schooling their children at home and potentially hosting extra family members (including seniors leaving nursing homes), checking for and eliminating radon can be especially important right now.

In these challenging times when we're all extra-stressed, it's important to take a deep breath and focus on long-term needs as well as short-term solutions. Indoor air quality issues tend to fall into both categories.