Is Carpet a Dust Trap or Source?
The short answer is both. Proponents of carpet often say carpet is a dust sink or trap, and only creates indoor air quality (IAQ) problems when the sink overflows, i.e., if you remove the dust from carpet through effective vacuuming [...]
Should We Use Environmental Monitoring Devices?
Lifewire recently interviewed IHC for an article on personal devices that measure pollution. Below are their questions and our responses. 1) Why are personal devices that measure pollution important? Personal environmental monitoring devices can be important because risk = [...]
How to Buy a Cordless Vacuum
The Wall Street Journal, Buy Side, interviewed Indoor Health Council on "How to Buy a Cordless Vacuum" and in-house expert, George Jackson of Advance Cleaning Equipment, Boise, ID, provided answers. Q: What factors should people consider when purchasing a cordless [...]
The High Cost of Wearing Street Shoes Indoors
Wearing street shoes indoors comes at a price: you may be tracking heavy metal dust from roadways, pesticide residues, and other unwanted substances. The Japanese custom of leaving street shoes in a rack by the door and donning alternate [...]
Real Books, Real Care and Cleaning
Even in a digital age, the tactile feel of "real" books still draws many of us, as does the look of a well-stocked office library, but that very physicality makes paper books dust collectors unless stored on shelves behind glass [...]
Stick Vacuums and Vacs for tile
In general, all dry vacuums work on a simple premise: particles in vs. particles out. The more particles brought in and the fewest released back to the environment, the better. A vacuum, stick or otherwise, is a system in which [...]
The Road to Success: Provide Value
In his book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, green business expert Shel Horowitz says: "In the business world, we hear a lot about cutthroat competition and gaining advantage over the enemy. In some circles, it seems to be a [...]
EPA Registers Air Sanitizer That Kills Viruses
On September 30, 2022, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) registered the first ever product for use against bacteria and viruses in air in residential and commercial areas. It is a 14% dipropylene glycol aerosol product. Below is the approved master [...]
Cleaning Chemical Chemistry
Cleaning and disinfecting products often contain chemicals. There are more than 80,000 chemicals in legal use—many of them in cleaning products—despite limited long-term safety testing, or more importantly, testing in mixtures as they occur indoors. Short or long-term exposure to [...]
Quality is Job One, Especially Air Quality
Ford Motors declared in the 80s, “Quality is Job One”—but when it comes to Indoor Air Quality (IAQ), that is literally true, since air is the number one source of exposure to chemicals in most buildings. As every car maker [...]