Air quality issues
Disrupter
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So I’ve always felt like I have bad allergies over the last decade or so. Congestion, fogginess, fatigue etc
I noticed recently it seems to be worse if I fall asleep on my children’s floor. This got me concerned for their health and air quality
We got a little detector and our particles and general chemical quality is ok but overall it says poor because we have a higher level of formeldehyde
Says about .139 ppm but it fluctuates
Quick research says My symptoms seem to start at about .1 ppm potentially but the even scarier part is apparently it’s a cancer risk
What options do I have to reduce this problem to get me and my family breathing better air?
I noticed recently it seems to be worse if I fall asleep on my children’s floor. This got me concerned for their health and air quality
We got a little detector and our particles and general chemical quality is ok but overall it says poor because we have a higher level of formeldehyde
Says about .139 ppm but it fluctuates
Quick research says My symptoms seem to start at about .1 ppm potentially but the even scarier part is apparently it’s a cancer risk
What options do I have to reduce this problem to get me and my family breathing better air?
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This website should give you some ideas for where to start.
Unfortunately I don’t think it’s going to be a matter of just filtering the air, you need to take steps to remove the sources of exposure.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
Do this thing one step at a time. It could just as easily be high amounts of co2 if your home is sealed up too well and you're not getting adequate ventilation. - Yes, this can happen with homes that lack ventilation in the hvac system where people keep the house shut up tight all winter/summer.
Depending on how long it's been since you replaced the filters, you can also shorten the interval for replacement until the air quality gets better (if it's helping). Typical recommendation for replacement is 60-90 days. You can inspect the filter half way through that interval and figure out if it requires changing earlier than normal, at least until it's caught up with filtering contaminants. You could also go as far as getting your ducts cleaned by a professional company, if you felt your filters were becoming dirty faster than normal.
Also, yes, formaldehyde-containing does nothing but make you anxious about what's in the home. Whatever materials are actually off-gassing or are otherwise contributing volatile components ('volatile' in this case only means that the material wants to turn into a gas at room temperature and pressure) to the home's atmosphere.
What changes have you made the past few months? Any new furniture? Did any rooms get painted? Have you cleaned the garage and now you're parking one or more cars inside (and to that end, is the garage door ever shut with the car running)? Have you recently moved a significant amount of furniture around in a couple of rooms?
Also, if you're on the floor, you're in closer contact to more household dust. Doubly so for carpets. So while your symptoms may point to something like formaldehyde, you could also just be having more acute allergy symptoms.
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This is a lot, but also think about whether there were recent changes at work as well (work furniture, new carpets, recent carpet cleaning, painting, moves to a new facility, etc.). Or even if you bought a new car recently.
We also had a dog that used to pee everywhere a lot and while we did our best to clean up after him we also know we need to redo the floor as soon as we can (been putting it off despite him being gone for almost a year) so I’m sure that doesn’t help
Since you have a detector, I'd recommend placing it around the house at various spots, and see if there's a room that's particularly worse than the rest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Clean_Air_Study
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
I read a lot about this study. The results are pretty minimal, and most of the benefit comes from the microbes in the soil, which differ by type of plant. You'd also have to have an epic number of plants (think: indoor jungle) for there to really be any noticeable effect.
I'm all for indoor plants, but having a peace lily or two in your house isn't going to do much of anything to improve the air quality.
Looking at the cited papers that is true for other volatiles like benzene, but that certain plants have a significant capability of direct absorbation for formaldehyde (with most studies citing an average of 60-90% reduction in formaldehyde) if you have about 1 small potted plant per 10 m2/107 sqft (most studies that referenced what kind of rooms they used peace lilies as their plant of choice). That's not a jungle.
Note that I'd pick some other plant (like a bamboo palm or boston fern) if you have cats or dogs since the peace lily is kinda toxic to most pets.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
I'm not here to argue about this study because it's only vaguely related to the OP of this thread, but the actual NASA study never mentions anything about "plants per square foot". Regardless, it's a somewhat useless suggestion! You'd really need to know what specific plants in specific sizes would be needed per cubic foot, since we're talking about air. The Wikipedia article that mentions the "per 100 square feet" says "[citation needed]". It's also mentioned on a billion websites with no source. If you want to get into this further, read these:
http://time.com/5105027/indoor-plants-air-quality/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3230460/
If air quality is an issue, it's possible plants may help, but without seeing studies that aren't in laboratories using sealed containers, carbon filters, ideal light and water requirements and a fan circulating air around the plant and root system, you can't definitively say that they'll make a noticeable difference to air quality inside a house or apartment.
Regarding the OP, I agree with others that the main issue likely resulted simply from sleeping on a carpeted floor in a kid's room.
To reduce allergens, it might be a good idea to get that carpet deep-cleaned, and remove dust from every surface you can find (using a dampened cloth or swiffer). Going over the tops of door frames, the top sides of fan blades, mopping down the hardwood floors, etc, can help a huge amount with allergies. After that you can try tackling the chemical compounds in the air, but reducing the easy-to-reduce allergens would be a good start.
Things that do help are getting rid of things that "trap" allergens (carpet) and change out air filters more frequently. The normal recommendation for changing filters on your furnace is once every 3 months. That changes drastically if you're not 2 people that live in a box and do nothing. If you have allergies, that drops to once every 2 months. For everything that's unique about your situation, you take about 20 days off the time. So pets will probably add another two weeks per pet, so 2 dogs and it's down to once a month, smokers/incense/candles drops it down to about every 15-20 days if you have allergies and pets too. Granted you don't have to be that rigid, but the amount of particulates that enter the air because of those things tends to add up very quickly. I recommend getting the really good filters too, don't cheap out and buy the $4 ones.
They do make special paints and drywall that absorb offgassed stuff that need to be replaced every 30-40 years, but that's a bit much. You'll also want to avoid memory foam on your beds if you're allergic to stuff because they tend to absorb a lot more funk and put it right at nose/face level for you to breath in all night.
And this stuff settles so carpet traps it like whoa, so it's not surprising it got worse for you the closer you got to the ground. The biggest thing you can do is remove carpets. You'll notice just how much funk they were trapping once you have hardwood or linoleum and are cleaning it every 2-3 days instead of once a week or fortnightly.
You mean like these field studies that all test the efficiency of potted plants in offices, commercial locals, apartments and schools all say "Yes. Plants do help, especially in buildings with poor ventilation"?
Oyabu T, Sawada A, Kuroda H, Hasmimoto T, Yoshioka T (2005) Purification capabilities of golden pothos and peace lily for indoor air pollutants and its application to a relaxation space. J Agric Meteorol 60:1145–1148
Wood RA, Burchett MD, Alquezar R, Orwell RL, Tarran J, Torpy F (2006) The potted-plant microcosm substantially reduces indoor air VOC pollution: I. Office field-study.Water Air Soil Pollut 175:163–180
Lim YW, Kim HH, Yang JY, Kim KJ, Lee JY, Shin DC (2009) Improvement of indoor air quality by houseplants in new-built apartment buildings. J Jpn Soc Hortic Sci 78:456–462
Kim HH, Lee JY, Yang JY, Kim KJ, Lee YJ, Shin DC, Lim YW (2011a) Evaluation of indoor air quality and health related parameters in office buildings with or without indoor plants. J Jpn Soc Hortic Sci 80:96–102
Pegas PN, Alves CA, Nunes T, Bate-Epey EF, Evtyugina M, Pio CA (2012) Could houseplants improve indoor air quality in schools? J Toxicol Environ Health A 75:1371–1380
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
This is also why toner is a health hazard in the workplace but not in your home because of volume of printing and design of buildings.