Leading British ventilation manufacturer Vent-Axia is sharing tips on how to love your lungs on Clean Air Day on Thursday 16 June 2022. Clean Air Day is led by environmental charity Global Action Plan and aims to improve public understanding of air pollution, build awareness of how air pollution affects our health and explain the easy actions we can all take to tackle air pollution, helping protect the environment and our health.
The theme for Clean Air Day this year is that ‘air pollution dirties every organ in your body’. Vent-Axia is therefore reflecting this by sharing tips on how vital it is to love your lungs to stay healthy and aims to raise the issue of how indoor air pollution, as well as outdoor air pollution, can affect our health. Indoor air pollution can affect lung health and is linked to increased risk of pneumonia, COPD and lung cancer. If an asthma sufferer has an allergic reaction to a pollutant in the air, this can also make asthma symptoms worse.
To support the campaign Vent-Axia is trying to help the public create some breathing space by sharing six useful tips that will help them take care of their lungs. For people with lung conditions, good indoor air quality (IAQ) is especially important. Key to tackling indoor air pollution and improving IAQ is to ‘reduce – dilute – purify’ and so Vent-Axia is sharing the following six tips to help take care of your lungs:
- Reduce the use of aerosols and use eco-friendly cleaning products
- Don’t smoke and avoid anyone smoking indoors
- Don’t forget to ventilate
- Stay active
- Breathe deeply
- Use an air purifier
Lena Hebestreit, Marketing Manager at Vent-Axia explains:
“We are pleased to once again be supporting Clean Air Day, which is now in its sixth year, especially during a time when good lung health is more important than ever. It is vital to reduce indoor air pollution to protect the health of your whole body and our six simple tips are designed to help everyone make small changes that can have a big impact on their IAQ and health. To improve IAQ there are three main actions to take: Reduce the number of pollutants introduced into the air; Dilute the pollutants in the air by ensuring there is adequate ventilation introducing fresh clean air; and Purify by adding an air purifier to remove the remaining pollutants from the air.”
Indoor air can contain over 900 chemicals, particulates, biological materials, viruses and bacteria. Each of us breathes 9,000 litres a day with poor IAQ affecting the health of everyone in our homes. It is therefore vital to reduce indoor air pollution by reducing the number of pollutants put into the air, diluting the pollutants in the air with effective ventilation and then purifying the air by adding an air purifier to remove the remaining pollutants from the air you breathe.
With this year’s Clean Air Day focusing how air pollution affects our entire bodies, the air we breathe indoors is more important than ever. The vital importance of clean air for children’s health was highlighted in the 2020 report by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) and the Royal College of Physicians, ‘The inside story: Health effects of indoor air quality on children and young people’. It found growing evidence that respiratory problems among children may be exacerbated by indoor air pollution in homes, schools and nurseries.
Furthermore, the ‘Indoor Air Quality at Home’ guidance from the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) also highlighted how reducing exposure to indoor pollutants helps protect health. In it NICE confirmed the critical role ventilation plays in removing pollutants and improving IAQ in the home, helping people to stay healthy. The guidance advises people to ensure rooms are well ventilated by extractor fans, trickle vents, cooker hoods or by opening windows, especially when undertaking activities that lead to poor IAQ. These activities include cooking, drying clothes inside, lighting open solid-fuel fires and candles, using cleaning products or solvents and paints, having showers and baths.
To help protect health in the home, Vent-Axia has been working hard to provide ventilation solutions to improve IAQ for households. For new build homes, Vent-Axia’s Sentinel Kinetic mechanical ventilation with heat recovery (MVHR) system boasts up to 93% heat recovery . A vital part of an MVHR system is its filters. Inside an MVHR unit, fresh incoming air passes through a filter to remove pollen, debris and products of pollution.
For private refurbishments, the Vent-Axia PureAir Sense fan is equipped with a pioneering odour sensor that increases airflow when the air is poor, helping ensure a comfortable living environment. Meanwhile, Positive Input Ventilation (PIV) units, the PoziDry Pro and PoziDry Compact Pro, are designed to improve IAQ and prevent moisture build-up within social housing properties, providing a highly effective solution to help landlords control condensation and mould as well as offering high levels of air filtration.
And for advanced air purification in the home, the Vent-Axia PureAir Room air purifier cleanses the air removing harmful particles, neutralising bad smells and removing pollen and pet allergens, for a fresher and healthier home. Designed with an advanced 6-stage filtration system, the Vent-Axia PureAir Room filters out mould, dust, viruses, PM2.5, VOCs, pet allergens and odours with its High Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) filter removing 99.9% of particles.
It is vital to combat air pollution to stay healthy and by making some simple changes you can protect yourself and others by ventilating and purifying your home to improve the air you breathe.
To find out more about Clean Air Day visit here.
For up-to-date ventilation guidance and further simple tips to tackle indoor air pollution visit: www.vent-axia.com/healthyhomes. For further information on all products and services offered by Vent-Axia, telephone +44 (0)344 856 0590 or visit www.vent-axia.com.
Six tips to keep your whole body healthy – Reduce-Dilute-Purify
- Reduce the use of aerosols and use eco-friendly cleaning products: Un-perfumed products with lower VOCs (volatile organic compounds) produce fewer pollutants, making the air in your home healthier to breathe in.
- Stop smoking and avoid anyone smoking indoors since smoking can rapidly lower indoor air quality. Smoking increases the risk of lung cancer and is linked to other lung diseases, including COPD, idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, and asthma.
- Don’t forget to ventilate: Use mechanical ventilation to remove polluted or humid air from the home, particularly when cooking, cleaning or taking a shower. Vent-Axia’s Lo-Carbon PureAir Sense features odour sense technology extracting polluted air from homes.
- Stay active: Staying active helps your lungs stay healthy.
- Breathe Deeply: Deep breathing can help rid the lungs of accumulated stale air, increase oxygen levels and allows the diaphragm to help you breathe.
- Use an Air Purifier: An air purifier, like the Vent-Axia PureAir Room, will remove pollutants from the air in your home. Purifying the air, you and your family breathe for a fresher and healthier indoor environment, air purifiers filter out a wide range of particles including mould, dust, viruses, VOCs, PM2.5, bacteria, pollen and allergens while neutralising bad smells.