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How to Make Your Home Healthier
8 Amazing and Affordable Eco-Friendly Ways
Adopting healthy practices and dispensing with toxic materials in your home doesn’t have to be expensive or complicated. With just a few changes, you’ll be able to improve your home environment and make it much healthier for you and your family.
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While several of the 8 fixes here discussed here are easy to adopt, others require a change in lifestyle and habits.
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Make Your Home Healthier Step #1:
Throw the nicotine out
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An estimate says that 40% of children in America are exposed to second-hand smoke at home. This is the biggest trigger for asthma at this young age.
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Smoking is an expensive habit, and a family could save a lot of money if they ditched the nicotine addiction.
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However, even the cost of tobacco is nothing compared to the future health costs for you and your family. Smoking is linked to lung cancer.
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If you encounter difficulties in quitting smoking, talk to your family physician or addiction counsellor who can help you tailor the best approach for quitting this harmful habit once for all.
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Make Your Home Healthier Step #2:
Filter your drinking water
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In the long run, filtered tap water might be a better choice than bottled water. In a recent study by the Environmental Working Group, 10 best-selling brands of bottled water were tested.
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The researchers have found a cocktail of 38 contaminants, including bacteria, fertilizer and industrial chemicals, with levels similar to those found in tap water.
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However, even though your water company filters tap water, the contaminants still find their way to your home.
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By again filtering at home, you can remove the last traces of contaminants such as lead, chlorine, Escherichia coli, pesticides, etc.
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While a simple pitcher-type filter is the cheapest and easiest to use, there are also highly effective under-sink filters that attach to the plumbing system.
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Make Your Home Healthier Step #3:
Test for Lead and Radon
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Lead paint and radon are dangerous lurking hazards that won’t go away if you ignore them.
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While lead poisoning is known to cause brain defects in a developing foetus and young children, radon exposure is poisonous and has been associated with a list of cancers.
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A popular choice in homes built before 1978, lead paint chips and releases lead particles in the form of dust, which is easily inhaled. Colourless and odourless, radon occurs naturally in the ground as a result of soil and rock breakdown.
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Homes with deep basements are especially vulnerable, as well as those with cracked foundations. A thorough home inspection for lead and radon can determine the presence of these two toxins, so you can take action to limit your exposure to them.
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Make Your Home Healthier Step #4:
Reduce The Amount of Dust and Mould
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Apart from dead skin cells and mites, house dust and house mould contain lead, fire retardants, pesticides and many other compounds which aggravate allergies.
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Even if these materials were used in your home decades ago, they can still be found in your house dust today.
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The most effective, but also the most expensive step is to replace the wall-to-wall carpeting with hardwood, tile, linoleum, even cork.
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If you still cannot dispense with area rugs, make sure you vacuum frequently, cutting no corners and getting all the dust bunnies.
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If you’re renovating, consider installing a central vacuum system. Not only it’s more convenient as you’re only handling the hose, but it stores the dust in a remote container in the basement, without any filtering back into the air.
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Make Your Home Healthier Step #5:
Remove Asbestos Components
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Once widely used and praised for its excellent fireproofing and heat insulating properties, asbestos can be found in a variety of building materials and fixtures, including roof shingles, wall siding, insulation, even elements of plumbing.
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While not toxic straightforward, the fine fibrous structure of this mineral can easily break during renovations, adaptations, or simply wear out due to old age.
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Once airborne, asbestos fibres are easily inhaled and can cause a number of chronic lung conditions, including mesothelioma, a form of cancer.
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Although banned much earlier, traces of asbestos can be found in homes built up to 1990s. The only way to remove it safely is to hire asbestos clearance experts to conduct an inspection followed by airborne asbestos monitoring that ensures that no trace is left after the removal.
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Make Your Home Healthier Step #6:
Eliminate Pesticides
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While they’re indispensable in killing roaches, mice, ants and lawn pests, overexposure to pesticides might induce a range of health problems in children.
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The problem with pesticides is that people focus on immediate effects, while the long-term health risks reveal themselves only later. Instead of spending a fortune on pesticides, we should focus more on prevention.
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You can keep roaches and ants at bay by washing dishes carefully and cleaning all the food residue from the kitchen, keeping food packages and containers closed and sealing any crack they use as points of entry.
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Instead of spraying the lawn against weeds, get into a habit of pulling them out.
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Make Your Home Healthier Step #7:
Swap Plastic for Glass
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Although the U.S. Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) says that bisphenol A (BPA) is safe to use, another government report, the National Toxicology Report expresses concern about its effect on the brain, prostate gland, and behaviour in foetuses, infants, and children.
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BPA-free labels can now be seen on many plastic containers from water bottles to disposable coffee tumblers.
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However, according to a study published in Current Biology, BPA-free plastic can still heat chemicals when heated or damaged.
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Although you can’t always avoid plastic, you can use reusable grocery bags instead of plastic ones and use glass storage containers.
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Make Your Home Healthier Step #8:
Adopt Non-Toxic Cleaning Products
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Nowadays you can rarely run into a cleaning product without all sorts of warnings and poison labels, and not without reason.
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Highly effective cleaners contain a potent mix of chemicals, some of which have adverse effects on children with asthma. After an excruciating session of scrubbing, mopping and cleaning, even adults can feel dizziness if the room hasn’t been ventilated properly.
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So why pollute the indoor air when you don’t need to, on top of polluting the waterways when you flush them down the drain. Apart from commercially available green cleaners that don’t contain chlorine, ammonia, and phosphates, you can make a few of your own at home.
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Limiting or entirely avoiding exposure to toxic chemicals should be at the top of every homeowner’s and parent’s list.
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‘While some of the advice here take time to adopt, we can all try to be more proactive in reducing household health risks.
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Article by Lucas Bergman
Lucas is a real estate agent and renewable energy consultant. Lucas is a regular contributor at smoothdecorator.com
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