Yes, Your Hardwood Floors Can Improve Indoor Air Quality

Seeking for a nutritious flooring solution for your residence? Want to boost your indoor air high quality? All paths direct to hardwood flooring.

Hardwood flooring is a excellent option when you are completely ready to provide timeless natural beauty, heat, and elegance to any space in your home. It is also a good selection if you want eco-welcoming and allergy-helpful flooring.

Not like other choices, hardwood floors don’t harbor grime, pollutants, or contaminants. But there is an artwork in picking the proper hardwood flooring choices.

What is an allergy?

Allergies are fairly frequent in the US. All over 50 million persons in the US by itself knowledge allergies each calendar year.

An allergy is triggered by an immune system response to a overseas compound named an allergen. Allergens choose on all types. You can have a response to something you take in, contact, inject, or inhale. The affect can consist of sneezing, a runny nose, scratchy throat, hives, or rashes. In severe cases, it can lower blood strain, cause asthma attacks, or even demise if not dealt with quickly.

How hardwood floors participate in a section in indoor air top quality

When most people today think about air high-quality, they imagine about matters that directly affect the air source. If you light-weight a candle, the fumes penetrate the air you breathe. If you spray a chemical cleaner to wipe down a desk, the spray enters the air provide.

Your air provide is controlled by your HVAC process. Each and every time the furnace or air conditioner turns on, conditioned air flows via the ventilation method, and out into just about every place in your residence. It can select up anything else nearby, these types of as the candle scent or chemical spray.

Nevertheless indoor air top quality goes deeper than what is freely shifting close to your residence. It is also what’s introduced in other approaches.

Like your flooring.

Indoor air high-quality can be impacted by every little thing about your flooring. What it’s produced of. The adhesives utilised for set up. The finishes utilized once it’s in spot.

What are VOCs?

You cannot talk about balanced flooring without a discussion on VOCs.

VOC stands for volatile natural and organic compounds. According to the EPA, VOCs are compounds that have a significant vapor tension and reduced drinking water solubility. They are emitted as gasses from selected liquids or solids, and include a selection of chemical compounds, some of which may have adverse health and fitness outcomes.

In whole, all around 1200 VOCs have been determined. And many of them are employed in the merchandise and supplies we use just about every working day.

• Acetone
• Acetic acid
• Butanal
• Ethanol
• Alcohol
• Formaldehyde
• Dichloromethane

VOCs are a component of life. They are in widespread substances these kinds of as paint, cleaning items, and cigarette smoke. They are in our creating components and the home furniture we use in our homes.

Awareness is prevention. It is what allows you to make greater choices as a shopper.

The most popular VOCs in a dwelling

Inside houses across the Front Array, you’ll come across 3 of the most harmful VOCs lurking in items you use each working day:

Formaldehyde – there are two kinds of formaldehyde: phenol and urea. Phenol is non-harmful, and is generally utilised in cabinetry, marine-grade plywood, and higher-conclude home furnishings. Urea is a single of the most harmful VOCs, and is utilized in all kinds of creating products, such as paneling, flooring, and other house furnishings. You can lessen publicity by sealing all uncovered surfaces.

Benzene – it is a common chemical identified in tobacco smoke, stored fuels, paint, solvents, and emissions from your automobiles. Refinishing a flooring can deliver substantial amounts of benzene.

Methylene chloride – this is current in items like paint strippers, adhesives, and aerosol spray paints and finishes. The human physique converts methylene chloride to carbon monoxide, which can guide to carbon monoxide poisoning when significant concentrations are current.

When you know these are existing, you can acquire ideal motion to cut down their effect. For occasion, you can use aerosol spray paints outdoors and with a deal with mask firmly in location to reduce their impact.

The hassle arrives when you aren’t informed of their existence, as turned evident in a 2015 report wherever Lumber Liquidators have been caught offering Chinese-manufactured laminate flooring that contained large amounts of formaldehyde.

Hardwood flooring can strengthen indoor air high-quality

If you want to locate flooring harmless for your spouse and children, lower in VOCs, and a much healthier selection for setting up in your property, hardwood is a fantastic preference.

But to uncover the ideal product for your house, you’ll have to do a very little investigation.

Natural wooden flooring will be one particular of your safest selections. But you do have to glance at the complete creation procedure.

Wood does include pure terpenes. They are risk-free, but they do impact really delicate persons. The scent you get from a pine tree would be an example.

Flooring also consists of a range of chemical compounds from processing. Pay focus to finishes, glues, baseboards, underlayments, and other output materials built from zero or reduced VOCs.

You can also locate manufacturers that meet rules as a result of various certification systems to make certain the output procedure is secure. Packages involve:

The major hardwood flooring companies will comply with these rules and additional. You can do your investigation right before you shop, or perform with a person of our associates to determine the right hardwood product best to go well with your desires.

Are you ready to store for hardwood flooring?

If you want an eco-helpful, inexperienced flooring alternative that will enable your property be the most secure put it can be, appear no more than hardwood flooring. It is the initial choice for lots of owners because of its classic great appears to be like. Increasing indoor air good quality is an additional reward.

You will like hardwood due to the fact it is:

• A durable possibility
• It is natural
• It is simple to clean up and maintain
• It’s hugely successful at reducing contaminants
• It does not have VOCs

How can we help you find hardwood flooring fantastic for your residence?