5 Ways to create a Healthy Home in Greenwich
Have you ever thought of your home as being healthy or unhealthy? While the principle of a healthy home may be brand-new to a few of us, it is steadily gaining popularity with homeowners. A healthy home can include a variety of elements from building products used to build your home to utilizing non-toxic cleansing products. Below is a list of 5 ways to help you in creating a healthy home environment.
1. Clean Air and Circulation:
Here are some little known realities about the air inside many of today’s houses:
Indoor air contaminant levels may be 2 to 5 times higher than the contaminant levels outdoors.
Indoor air contaminant is among the top environmental issues today.
Australians spend approximately 90% of their time inside your home.
Indoor air contaminants such as tobacco smoke, pollen, mold, dust, and animal dander have the ability to create asthmatic and allergic reactions.
Listed below are a few ways to improve the quality of your indoor air:
Consider an Indoor Air Purifier. You can also set up exhaust fans in bathrooms to assist remove wetness and chemicals from your home.
Upgrade the air filters on your furnace with the pleated filters that capture smaller sized particles. Change the filters regularly as recommended by the manufacturer’s directions.
You can also use indoor houseplants to aid in cleansing your home’s air. For instance, Boston Ferns cleanse formaldehyde from the air. According to environmental experts, formaldehyde is a colorless, strong-smelling gas. When present in the air at levels above 0.1 ppm (parts in a million parts of air), it may trigger watery eyes, burning sensations in the eyes, nose and throat, queasiness, coughing, chest tightness, wheezing, skin rashes, and allergic reactions. Formaldehyde can be found in insulation, particleboard, paper products and many cleaning products.
2.Dust-proof Your Home:
Dust your rooms and knickknacks regularly with a wet fabric.
Dust your wood, tile, linoleum, and laminate flooring regularly with a dust mop or a vacuum made for hard flooring.
Vacuum carpets, carpets, and upholstered furniture regularly. Consider buying a vacuum cleaner with a HEPA (high-efficiency particulate air) filter. A HEPA filter can getting rid of a minimum of 99.97% of all particles that are 0.3 microns or bigger. In addition, consider utilizing a bag-less vacuum to avoid the exposure of dust when you change a bag.
Frame pillows, mattresses, and box springs in an airtight, dust-proof cover.
Dust/clean ceiling fans regularly to make sure they are not launching dust in the air every time you run them.
Change dust-collecting blinds and long drapes with window shades or washable curtains.
3. Use Natural and Non-Toxic Cleaning Products:
One way to assure that the fragrances in your house are clean and fresh is to avoid utilizing harsh cleaning products, which can create fumes that may linger for days. Try utilizing natural ingredients such as baking soda, vinegar, club soda, and lemon juice.
For instance, to make a natural glass cleaner, combine:
2 teaspoons white vinegarone quart of warm water
Mix ingredients together and pour into spray bottle. Spray on surface and wipe dry.
4. Fill Your Home with Natural and Earth-Friendly Products. Below is a little list of environmentally friendly products available on the marketplace today:
Organic cotton towels, linens, clothes
Mattresses bediing, pillows
Cork flooring, wool carpet
Couches, chairs, ottomans
Toys and games for all ages
Pet products
Soap and laundry detergents
Organic candles, home decoration accessories
5. Use Safe, Non-Toxic Interior Paints that have extremely low VOC (volatile organic compounds) contentno formaldehydelow odor
Try utilizing any of the above tips to create a healthy home environment. Although the idea of a healthy home is reasonably brand-new to many, there are numerous resources available including books, articles, and sites, where you can find additional information.
If you need environment cleaning services in Wollstonecraft, Northwood, Waverton, St Leonards, Crows Nest, Woolwich, Longueville, North Sydney, Naremburn, McMahons Point and Greenwich, call us now!
Natural, Chemical Free At Home Dry Cleaning Techniques
Perchloroethylene, much better called perc, is used by 80 percent of dry cleaners in Australia as a solvent to clean clothes that are “dry clean only.” In spite of its effectiveness, the use of this chemical has been connected to a series of health adverse effects and has recently come under heavy public scrutiny. With heavy regulation from relevant agencies, professional dry cleaners are seeking the use of a more secure chemical– liquid carbon dioxide– to provide a green laundry option. At-home dry cleaning kits such as are providing the alternative of affordable & environmentally safe dry cleaning, that cuts down the energy-burning, waste producing processes that the professionals use.
The primary step to green dry cleaning is replacing damaging chemicals with natural cleaning products. Perchloroethylene (perc) is a synthetic chemical that is made from a reaction between ethylene and chlorine. Like many syntheitic chemicals, it poses a danger to our health. Perc is a main nervous system depressant. Exposure to it can occur in the office or in the environment when it is released into air, water, land, or groundwater. It can also occur when people use products consisting of perc, spend time in dry cleaning facilities that use perc, live above or adjacent to these dry cleaning facilities, or bring dry cleaned garments into their home before they are appropriately aired out. Short-term contact can trigger lightheadedness, headaches, queasiness, and irritation of the skin, eyes, nose, and throat, while long term exposure poses greater dangers, including liver and kidney damage and cancer.
Liquid carbon dioxide
Liquid carbon dioxide (CO2) appears to be the most practical green dry cleaning solvent to replace perchloroethylene. It is cheap, abundant, naturally occurring and can even be recycled from the industrial wastes from the manufacture of chemicals such as ammonia. Most notably, exposure to carbon dioxide has no health adverse effects. The only drawbacks for dry cleansing with CO2 are that it does not clean as well as perc does and the machinery required to use it is extremely costly, therefore a greater rate is passed on to the customer.
A virtue of environmentalism is moderation. That being said, green dry cleanind is best achieved if you do not dry clean at all or restrict the use ofprofessional dry cleaning by using at-home dry cleaning kits for garments with smaller sized spots and stains or that need to be refreshed. Professional dry cleaning is a large process that utilizes a lot of energy and produces a lot of waste in the form of powder residue, sludge and wastewater. If the dry cleaner is still utilizing perc (it is still allowed in many states), these compounds are dangerous. At-home dry cleaning includes no more than a cleaning cloth and your clothes dryer. There are no damaging chemicals involved and no waste.
While perc is the most efficient dry cleaning solvent, the use of natural cleaning products and at-home dry cleaning can only be beneficial to our health and our environment.
Green Cleaning Gets a Boost with the Ultimate Cloth
No one would argue that there’s a growing consciousness about the effect that we, as humans, have on the environment. While much of the media’s focus has been on greenhouse gas emissions and the ways we can minimize our carbon footprint, less attention has been paid to the effect that standard cleaning products and methods have on our health and on the environment. Although chlorofluorocarbons have long been acknowledged as contributing to the exhaustion of the earth’s ozone layer, and have been largely removed from customer products, traditional cleaning products continue to have a damaging impact on the environment. To that end, there has been a wave of “green cleaning” products entering the market.
Traditional Cleaning Products
Many conventional cleaning products contain a range of potentially damaging chemicals, in part due to the fact that they are largely uncontrolled and in part due to the fact that there are couple of labeling requirements. For instance, many cleaning products contain phosphates (which are also a primary element of many fertilizers), which can infect water and rob lakes and rivers of oxygen. Also, many cleaning products with dyes and fragrances contain phthalates, and most integrate other natural substances into their formulas. Together, these chemicals can have adverse effects on the neurological functions, respiration, and reproductive organs of humans and wildlife. Our use of several different cleaning agents at the same time (a window cleaner, a basin cleanser, and a toilet bowl cleaner, for instance) can exacerbate the products’ impacts on our health.
Green Cleaning Products
In response to the growing concern about the chemicals in cleaning products and their adverse impacts on our health and on the health of our planet, green cleaning products are being promoted. Some companies that make green products ban particular chemicals, and others make it a point to totally divulge all ingredients on labels. What they don’t tell you, however, is that it’s absolutely possible to have a clean home without utilizing any cleaning products at all. Cleaning without products may take a bit more effort, but water alone will do the trick.
Why Water and a Cloth Works Just as Well
For the environmentally mindful, one of the very best cleaning tools is a cloth – some would say the ultimate cloth – that utilizes mirafiber to produce a streak free, spot free, lint free, and dust free finish. Utilizing this kind of fabric means that you don’t have to use paper towels, which add to the waste that adversely impacts the environment. Additionally, this ultimate fabric is generally guaranteedto last 5 years, making it extremely environmentally friendly. Because it’s washable and bleachable, it can be used over and over again on practically any surface, from windows and glass to stainless steel and Corian. Essentially, you just wet it, wring it, clean your surface, and walk away. This ultimate fabric saves time, saves money, and, most notably, helps save the earth.
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