What to Do with Pollutants during Home Construction and Renovation

Caution Poisonous!

A detached single-family home consists of hundreds of different construction materials in which dangerous pollutants for your health can lurk.

You should protect yourself from this dangerous threat paying attention and choosing only healthy and tested products when renovating or building.

Photo by Kitchen Tune-Up – RoanokeMore kitchen photos

Where are pollutants hiding in your home?

There are so many construction and renovating products with harmful emissions.

They can be hidden everywhere in glue, paint, wallpaper, oils, waxes, lacquers, insulating products, drywall, plywood, doors, windows, and many wood materials.

Lacquers, oils, waxes

For example, lacquers, oils, waxes, and some paints contain harming chemical components such as higher aldehydes, terpenes, and aliphatics.

With the help of lacquers, oils, and waxes you cover and protect wood surfaces, but they can pollute the breathing air in the living space.

So, pay attention to the product seal and the recommended quantity of the order.

What can you do to protect yourself?

After applying the product, ventilate the place for several days and store the treated pieces of furniture somewhere outdoor. In this way the harmful emissions will rapidly decrease.

Here you can read another interesting article from our website:

The Benefits of Using Pultruded Profiles – Tips and Ideas (howtobuildahouseblog.com)

https://howtobuildahouseblog.comthe-advantages-of-using-pultruded-sections-in-your-building-construction/

Floor coverings – carpet, parquet, laminate

You need chemical products in order to cover your flooring with carpet, parquet, or laminate such as adhesives, sealants, and primers.

These products bring more harmful pollutants into the home interior than the flooring covering itself.

Carpets and rugs themselves are prone to house dust and need to be regularly vacuumed.

Glue and generally the adhesives have chemical components such as isocyanates, solvents, and acetic acid.

However, you can find adhesive products with very low emission of pollutants.

Wall paints and wallpapers

When it comes to painting or wallpapering the walls you need to know that the paints and adhesives, including the primers contain harmful emission chemical components such as formaldehyde, solvents, plasticizers, and glycols.

So, you should ventilate the space in the painting process and after.

Here, you can watch other amazing videos from our YouTube channel:

Grig Stamate – Interior Design Solutions – YouTube

Insulating materials

Hard to believe but most of the insulating materials are not too harmful for the indoor air quality.

However, you need caution at the impact with the insulation materials. They contain styrene and formaldehyde. Be careful that no carcinogenic styrene escapes into the home interior.

There are many other toxic products that can affect your health. You can find them:

  • in the wood materials (terpenes, aldehydes)
  • in doors and windows (volatile solvents and glycols)
  • in drywall (higher aldehydes and terpenes)

All of these construction materials and compounds should be emission tested.

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