There is nothing scarier than watching your child suffer through an illness that you can’t stop or cure. Even worse is if they’re struggling to breathe. No matter how often you watch your child go through an asthma attack, it still stops your heart and terrifies you until it’s over. You’ve got them on the right medicine. You’ve talked to their school. Now it’s time to make sure your Manassas, Virginia, home is safe for your children and help make it a place they can be free of frequent asthma attacks.
You can help your asthmatic children breathe easier when they’re at home with a few changes to your cleaning habits and through the use of products and services to make the air in your home cleaner. You don’t have to settle for uncontrollable asthma attacks and watching your children suffer. There’s plenty you can do to help them.
Common Asthma Triggers in Your Home
Before you can make your home cleaner with more breathable air for your children, you need to know what the common triggers are for an asthma attack. While your home should be the safest place for your kids, what may be lurking on the couch or in the carpet could be very dangerous to anyone with asthma. The most common triggers include:
- Mold and mold spores
- Dust mites
- Pollen
- Secondhand smoke
- Pet dander
- Roaches and other bugs
- Strong odors from hairspray, perfume, air fresheners, and cleaning products
- Wood smoke
Many of these triggers are lurking in and around your children all the time. Odors, dust, dander, and other triggers can be found in their pillows and bedding, on the couch, in your drapes and curtains, in carpet fibers, on the floor, on shower curtains, and in the very air you breathe. Before you worry that your home is a landmine of possible asthma attacks, though, be aware that there are plenty of things you can do to make your air cleaner and easier to breathe for your children.
How to Reduce Asthma Triggers: DIY
You may already know a few do-it-yourself tricks for making the air in your home cleaner and better, but there’s always something new to try. Make sure you’re consistent with your efforts to get the greatest benefit of fewer asthma attacks and more breathable air for your children. Try some or all of these options to reduce the asthma triggers in your home, and give yourself time to form a habit until this becomes second nature to you.
- Change filters regularly. This includes your vacuum, HVAC, air purifier, and anything else that filters air. Once a filter is clogged with dirt and other particles, it no longer works as efficiently.
- Add green plants around your home. Plants like English Ivy and peace lilies are great at cleaning the air in your home, plus they look nice.
- Groom your pets regularly. If you’re able to have a pet at all, make sure they’re cleaned and brushed and receive regular trims. This will help reduce pet dander in your home.
- Use a high-quality vacuum. Make sure it has a HEPA filter and good suction to keep your floors clean. Vacuum once a week to pick up whatever is tracked in from outside.
- Reduce the amount of carpeting or rugs in your home. You should especially do this in the bedrooms where your children spend most of their time. If you must have carpet, choose low-pile and don’t let anyone walk over it in their shoes.
- Keep bedrooms clean and use dust-mite-proof bedding and mattresses. Wash bedding every week, and remove the carpet or vacuum it more than once a week.
- Use all-natural cleaners. Also be sure to avoid noxious chemical sprays when possible.
- Make your home a no-smoking zone. This one should be a no-brainer, but it still stands to be said — cigarette smoke is one of the leading and most preventable asthma triggers that exist. Respect your family’s health and smoke outside if you have to light up.
- Take off your shoes at the front door. Plenty of pollen, dust, and dirt comes inside from the bottoms of our shoes. Don’t let these irritants spread all over your home.
Doing these things may not eliminate every asthma trigger in your home, but they will nonetheless drastically improve your indoor air quality and help decrease the amount of asthma attacks your child has at home.
How to Reduce Asthma Triggers: Products and Services
Sometimes no amount of cleaning or shoe-removal will keep asthma attacks at bay. The triggers are in the air you’re breathing, brought in by dust in the ductwork of your HVAC system, poor ventilation, and extra moisture from too much humidity. When that happens, it’s time to think bigger and improve the air in your home before it reaches the rooms where your children spend the most amount of time.
Fortunately, there are plenty of products and services designed to improve your home’s air quality and let everyone breathe easier. Here are some of the major ones that we offer:
Humidifiers
Too little humidity, when the air becomes too dry, leads to runny noses, dry throats, and watery eyes as allergens in the air are able to thrive and aggravate your child’s asthma or other family members who may be susceptible to allergies. Too much humidity leaves extra moisture in the air, allowing mold spores to grow and thrive. The ideal humidity should be between 30 and 50 percent, depending on the time of year, temperature, and other factors.
Sometimes you can throw open a window to level out the humidity, but this poses its own problems with pollen, smoke, and other airborne triggers that may come in from outside. You could add a humidifier for your child’s bedroom, but that may not help them when they play in the living room or sit down to breakfast in the kitchen. A whole house humidifier makes sure the air is at the right humidity level in every room, and you can control when and how often it runs.
Air Purifiers and Cleaners
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could get rid of the pollen, dander, or other allergens before you breathed them in? A home filled with clean, breathable air may sound like a dream, but with the right system, it can be a reality. Depending on the model you select, an air cleaner may be able to remove some of the smallest microbes in the air, so small that no amount of vacuuming or changing filters could ever catch them all.
We offer Aprilaire products for indoor air quality. Some of the air cleaners and purifiers can trap more than 90 percent of airborne particles smaller than one micron. These systems are compatible with different programmable thermostats so you can have control over how often it runs. Plus, you’ll receive notifications when the air filter needs to be changed.
Cleaner Air Equals Safer Kids
As parents, we’ll do anything to protect our children from harm. When our home and the air we breathe is hurting them, we have to do everything we can to keep our kids safe. Make the air in your home cleaner and better for your asthmatic child to breathe and reduce asthma attacks at home in the process.
If you’ve got an asthma sufferer in your home and you’re ready to discuss our indoor air quality options for your home, contact us at Griffith Energy Services. We can help you have cleaner, more breathable air, and a little less to worry about. Call us today at 888-474-3391.
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