Monday, February 4, 2008

How To Reduce Mold And Stay Healthy

Reducing the amount of mold growth in your home usually starts with removing the existing growth from the property. This growth is typically located in the moist areas of your home like the kitchen and bathroom, but what if you do not already have mold in the house and you want to prevent it? There are a few different ways that you can do this, but one of the most helpful is the HEPA filter.

HEPA filters are specifically designed to remove particles from the air that we breathe indoors down 0.03 microns in size. Believe it or not, this means that it removes everything that is down to one third the width of a person’s hair. Dust mites, mold spores, hair, pet dander, pollen, and just about anything else that you can think of gets removed by these filters, so you can imagine the help it must bring to people with respiratory conditions like emphysema, asthma, and allergies. This is a great addition to the fact that it takes the mold spores out of the house before they have a chance to land on anything wet and start growing.

Vacuum cleaners that have HEPA filters are the only kind that should really be used in your home, since other types of vacuums may extract all of these particles from your carpet’s pile, but toss them right back into the air that you breathe. In reality, you might as well not have vacuumed at all, since it will just settle back down on the carpet.

If you decide to purchase an air purification system for your home, you should only get one that has a HEPA filter, since the other types simply do not work as well. This is the best kind of system that you can get, as long as you get one that can handle the square footage of your home. Air purification systems are often used by more expensive businesses who have employees that spend a lot of time indoors in a particular space, since the air needs to be circulated and kept from being stale, but at the same time needs to be clean of particle debris that can cause illness. The less employees are sick, the less sick days they take, and the less insurance is claimed. You may not work in a building like this, but it is a fact that people spend more time indoors these days and to stay healthy, breathing the cleanest air possible is a must.