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Why Should I Care About My Home's Air Quality?
According to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), concentrations of some pollutants indoors can be two to five times higher than outdoors. This reality is due to several factors, including tighter, more energy-efficient building envelopes, chemical usage from cleaning supplies and pesticides, and growth in synthetic home furnishings and building materials. Polluted indoor air can be unpleasant by itself. Still, more concerning, it can cause adverse health effects such as respiratory disease, headaches, fatigue, and irritation of the eyes, nose, and throat—and, in the case of more dangerous pollutants like radon, cancer.
How Do I Make Sure My Home's Indoor Air Is Healthy?
I think about indoor air quality in terms of three pillars. It all begins with what might be contaminating your air in the first place, so we'll look at reducing the source of pollutants. Next, assuming you can't control all contaminants, it's important to ventilate your indoor air. And finally, air filtration helps decontaminate your air. LEED addresses each of these with various prerequisites (the most important components when building a remodeling a home) and credits, so let's dive in.
Pillar 1: Source Reduction
Garage Pollutant Protection
A single-family home with an attached garage may seem like the utmost in luxuries—you don't have to go outside to get into your car and do the multitude of other activities people tend to relegate to the garage. The problem? Most cars are still gas-powered, and when running, they produce the deadly gas carbon monoxide. To protect homeowners, LEED requires that no air-handling equipment or ductwork be located inside the garage (unless it is only serving the garage).
In addition, all shared surfaces between the garage and the home must be tightly sealed. All connecting floor and ceiling joist bays must be sealed, and any doors into the garage must be weather-stripped, as though it is an exterior door. These measures help protect conditioned spaces from carbon monoxide emissions and other harmful odors, like paints and chemicals stored in the garage.
Pillar 2: Ventilation
Pillar 3: Air Filtration
Melissa Rappaport Schifman
Melissa became the Twin Cities’ fifth LEED for Homes Accredited Professional (LEED AP) and completed the work necessary to get her own home LEED Gold Certified, the basis for her book, Building a Sustainable Home: Practical Green Design Choices for Your Health, Wealth, and Soul, (Skyhorse Publishing, August, 2018). With her corporate experience in finance, marketing, and business development, and an MBA and Master’s in Public Policy from the University of Chicago, Melissa has been providing sustainability advisory services to businesses, governmental agencies and non-profits, focusing on strategic and operational change that provide bottom-line financial returns. She has led the LEED certification of two million square feet of commercial buildings, written GRI-compliant Corporate Sustainability Reports, is a LEED Pro Reviewer and LEED mentor with the U.S. Green Building Council. She is the founder of Green Intention LLC where she writes about sustainable home living.
