Dr. Avnish Jolly, 5th November, 2008 :Most of people believe air pollution is only outside and our children can escape its hazards inside the house. Dangerous atmosphere is inside the home as well. According to the world health report, indoor air pollution is responsible for 2.7 per cent of the global burden of disease. It’s time you take steps to protect your family from breathing in pollutants.
Air purifiers are available in the market to be picked up. But there seems to be some confusion about their effectiveness. But just think how much time people spend inside their house? How long they can stop kids from going out? You can’t put purifiers all across your home? So, rather than looking for shortcuts, it is far healthier to take precautions to cut pollution. Actually there’s no link between purifiers and pollution hazards. SPMs smaller than 10 micron enter our systems and create problems. These machines are unable to catch those particles. So what’s the use? Bigger ones are unable to enter our bodies anyway. For instance, earlier people faced health problems due to pollution at a very old age. Then this problem occurs at around the middle age. But what I am more concerned about is my kids. The problems that we had within us have been forwarded to our kids through sperms in the form of germs. And that’s what going to be most harmful. If tomorrow a kid has leukemia, Doctor won’t be able to connect to the root cause. Because I can’t think the problem has occurred due to some pollutants. But it played its deadly role
We have enough patients around with lungs and respiratory problems. The problem is monstrous enough to keep deals with diseases of the lungs and the respiratory tract busy all day. Children are especially at risk. Loads of studies in western countries have already proved health hazards of pollution, be it outdoor or indoor. We don’t need to reinvent a wheel. We need to take those studies further to help us save from this problem, Approximately 70 per cent patients that go to physicians suffer from one or the other respiratory problems like cold, cough, asthma and these are all mainly due to pollution. But since we have been talking for long and too often about pollution, have we begun to undermine the gravity of the issue? Somewhere it hasn’t been given its due importance. And since pollution actually takes a toll on our bodies 15-20 years later, it’s very difficult, almost next to impossible, to detect its cause-effect relation.
Most of us do not know that pollution affects different people in different ways. It depends a lot on the pollutant type, its concentration in the air, length of exposure and individual susceptibility. But mind it, indoor and outdoor pollution makes a deadly combination. In fact, indoor pollution is surely more harmful. Due to carpets and furnishings, there are many pollutants that enter our respiratory system and cause problems. Child’s regular exposure to dust mites, cockroaches, animals’ danders, moulds and tobacco smoke cause more harm than exposure to outdoor air pollution.
Air pollution is known to cause acute and chronic effects on health. “Health effects range from minor irritation of eyes and the upper respiratory system to chronic respiratory disease, heart diseases, which are becoming so common nowadays, and lung cancer. In fact, pollution worsens the condition of people with pre-existing heart or lung disease, according to him. For asthmatics, any kind of pollution has shown to aggravate the frequency and severity of attacks. In our daily life we find people got unconscious twice while commuting in buses or local trains due to pollution. We also find a person standing or sitting across me murmuring I just couldn’t breathe. I felt I would die. I am so afraid of pollution and suffocation.
Interestingly, we are hardly aware of the hazards of indoor pollution and still not aware of the seriousness of indoor pollution. Tobacco is the main cause behind it. Lots of parents smoke inside the house without realising that the contaminants could actually lead to death of a child. We have come across some cases where infants suffered from middle ear infection and because they were unable to tell about the pain, they died before proper diagnosis and treatment.
There are a range of airborne pollutants in indoor environment that include particulate matter, gases, vapours and biological materials. In homes, common sources of pollutants include tobacco smoke, gas and wood stoves, furnishings and construction materials that release organic gases and vapours. Of course, it isn’t easy to control outdoor pollution but what can be done at an individual level is to at least decrease indoor pollution.
To improving indoor air quality is simpler; here are several steps to make a Beginning:
Avoid smoking indoors.
• Keep home dry: Control the humidity and let more air into your home by ensuring sufficient ventilation.
• Dry the wet area out. Dry clean furnishings or put them out in sun to prevent mould growth, which aggravate asthma.
• Repair leaky roofs, walls and basements.
• Keep home clean and dust free.
• If involved in painting like activities that produce high levels of pollutants, try to do it outside the house.