Make a Resolution to Monitor the Indoor Air Quality at Your Business

If you are a business owner, we don’t have to tell you how much you depend on your employees – especially these days! In turn, your employees depend on you to provide a healthy and safe work environment. Indoor air quality testing and mold inspections are important steps you can take to ensure that you are living up to your end of the bargain.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, “Americans, on average, spend approximately 90 percent of their time indoors,1 where the concentrations of some pollutants are often 2 to 5 times higher than typical outdoor concentrations.2” A big chunk of that time is spent at work, so testing the indoor air quality at your business can have a big impact on the health and wellness of your workforce.

Lots of people make New Year’s resolutions at the start of every year. And lots of people abandon those resolutions by the time February rolls around. (Not all of our environmental testing experts make resolutions, but most of those that made resolutions this year are still going strong!)

Threats to Indoor Air Quality

As the EPA explains, “Indoor concentrations of some pollutants have increased in recent decades due to such factors as energy-efficient building construction (when it lacks sufficient mechanical ventilation to ensure adequate air exchange) and increased use of synthetic building materials, furnishings, personal care products, pesticides, and household cleaners.”

In other words, the carpeting you walk on every day at work might be emitting volatile organic compounds. The desks where your employees work might be releasing formaldehyde into the air. The supplies your cleaning crew uses could also be releasing VOCs.

Typical pollutants of concern, according to the EPA, include:

• Various volatile organic compounds
• Combustion byproducts such as carbon monoxide, particulate matter and tobacco smoke
• Mold
• Pesticides
• Asbestos and lead contained in older buildings and materials
• Ozone (from some air cleaners)
• Naturally occurring radon
• Pet dander (You don’t have to have a pet-friendly facility for this to be a concern. Pet-loving employees and guests coming to your building could bring dander in on their clothes and footwear.)

Resolve to Protect Your Workforce

You don’t have to limit New Year’s resolutions to your personal life. Businesses large and small can also benefit from making resolutions. And, according to the calendar keepers at BrownieLocks, January just happens to be International New Year’s Resolutions Month for Businesses.

If you have made a resolution to protect your employees – and yourself! – from threats to the indoor air you breathe all day, contact the indoor air quality testing experts at AirMD for information about our commercial services, including asbestos testing and surveys, lead testing, mold assessments, volatile organic compound (VOC) testing and comprehensive environmental air testing.