Photo By Oracio Alvarado

So much time is spent worrying about if the air outside, the car you drive, the school your children attend, or that the place you work could be filled with environmental dangers, that where you spend most of your time, your home, is often overlooked entirely. We like to think of our homes as a refuge from the outside world, a place where we can feel safe and clean, but in most cases this couldn’t be further from the truth. The EPA estimates that 60% of homes are toxic to some degree and may be causing harm to you and your family.

The most common household environmental danger comes from the air, which can contain up to one hundred times more pollutants than the air just outside your door. From poor circulation and radon gas, to off gassing from Volatile organic compounds and toxic molds, the amount of invisible dangers is staggering. These chemicals, gases and molds can lead to numerous health problems ranging from respiratory issues, sinus infections, fatigue, asthma and memory loss just to name a few. In fact there are so many symptoms from living in a toxic home that most people and doctors have trouble connecting the dots to it being the cause of your poor health. Thankfully, in most cases improving your air quality is as simple as opening a few windows every day for a couple of hours and letting in some fresh air, or even buying an air purifier. In the more extreme cases where this alone is not enough, one should contact a specialist who can run tests on just what is in your homes air, and recommend a way to resolve the problem.

Another major cause of health problems in the home is your water supply. From old lead pipes, pesticides, nitrates, or even bacteria, there are a lot of environmental dangers that could be coming from your faucet. If you think your home could be having a water problem, first contact the EPA’s drinking water hotline where they can tell you about the quality of water in your area. Beyond that, you will need to purchase a water testing kit and have it sent off to a lab, which generally costs under one hundred dollars per test.

By Mark Johnson