Indoor Air Pollution

“Indoor air pollution is America's Number One Environmental Health Concern” – EPA


Indoor air pollution is quickly becoming one of the top environmental issues of the 21st century. The EPA lists poor indoor air quality as the 4th largest environmental threat to our country. As the price of energy continues to rise, new and creative methods of conservation and preservation are being developed and deployed almost daily. New construction techniques and materials minimize air transference from outside to inside. This reduction in circulation has minimized the influx of outside pollutants to the interiors of our homes and work environments and has changed the mixture of indoor air pollutants that now effect our lives.

Allergens and outside germs, such as mold spores, pollen, and the common cold, are now carried in on clothing, grocery bags, pizza boxes, newspapers, mail, magazines, school books, pets and everything else used in our day to day lives. Due to the new energy efficient construction used today, pollutants are now trapped and re-circulated indoors. Indoor air pollution is a direct result of our progress as a civilization. As we learned in high school science class, For Every Action - There Is A Reaction. As mankind has progressed from the stone age, living completely in the open, through the bronze and iron ages, where technology began evolving and mankind moved indoors, to present day where technologies have moved man further into controlled and confined environments. These actions have driven civilization to react with new technologies to protect us from our own advances. Fossil fuels are burned to create energy which powers transportation, electrical devices, and heating and cooling.

New research has provided multiple types and forms of filtration devices to remove air pollutants from our indoor air. Passive air filtration occurs as air is pushed or pulled through a filter, trapping particulate matter. This is the premise of most air filtering units on the market today. They only clean the air of pollutants as it passes through the unit. Not all indoor air pollutants are light enough or large enough to be moved by a small fan in the open designs of our indoor structures. What about other pollutants like germs on surfaces, pet dander on furniture, floors, carpeting, and their bedding, mold and mildew found in bathrooms and basements or crawl spaces, second hand smoke and dust mites? Have you ever tried to pass a counter top, toilet, or sink through a filter? This awareness has driven researchers to develop new technologies to attack these types of pollutants where they lie. The basis for these technologies were developed by NASA to clean the air in the International Space Station and the space shuttle. Positive and negative ionization processes, photo catalysis, and minimal ozone generation, are new methods of attacking the pollutants and killing or making the particulates heavier than air so they drop to the ground before they reach our lungs and skin. Ozone, generated in a confined and controlled environment, can kill germs on surfaces, penetrate into cracks and crevices to kill mold and mildew, and remove smoke and odors to further minimize indoor air pollution. These active technologies which occur naturally in nature as sunshine, lightening, rain and snow are now being implemented in products called Air Purifiers.


New industries are being created as well as old industries being modified to identify and create solutions to problems that present themselves to today's society as well as what many believe will impact future societies based on today's knowledge. Two major contributors to the development of solution based technologies are the military and space exploration. It is the private sector that keeps us in the use of fossil fuels for financial gains. If it was more profitable to deliver green energy, fossil fuels would be a thing of the past, no pun intended, and society would not require a solution to indoor air pollution. Until this occurs, society is pressed to find alternative methods of protection from our own device.

To learn more about the author of this site, Ron Robinson, click here. www.fortsecure.com