The Quality of Air Your Baby Breathes Matters
The quality of the air inside your home can have a strong effect on your baby’s health. Your child’s well-being and safety is your No. 1 priority throughout their life, and especially so when they are newborn infants. Pollutants and airborne toxins can cause respiratory problems, illness, and other severe risks to an adult’s health, but the risks are even higher for a newborn with their more vulnerable lungs.
As a new parent, you’re probably already checking your baby’s breathing every night, but what if the air your in your home is bad?
When your baby breathes air that contains contaminants or toxins, he or she can develop some pretty scary respiratory problems and diseases.
Study Links Poor Indoor Air Quality to Infant Illness
A study published back in 2009 found that air pollution can increase the risk of infant bronchitis and hospitalization. According to the study, which a doctor at the University of Washington spearheaded, babies with high exposure to air pollution were up to 10 percent more likely to require hospitalization as a result of bronchitis infection. Bronchitis in infants has also been found to increase their risk of developing asthma later in life.
Bronchitis is a respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), which is also one of the causes of croup. Poor indoor air quality can cause bronchitis, croup, and other RSV diseases.
Allergens and airborne toxins are also a leading cause of asthma in infants. Dust mites, mold, animal dander, cockroach debris, and other indoor air pollutants contribute to poor indoor air quality and the risk of asthma for your newborn, according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America.
Premature babies are already at risk for respiratory distress syndrome (RDS), which makes breathing hard for the infant. Premature babies often have under-developed lungs, which have not yet started creating surfactant, a substance important for helping the lungs fill with air. RDS causes the air sacs in the lungs to deflate and requires the baby to work overly hard to breathe. For these premature babies, air pollutants cause even more dangerous and long-term respiratory problems for their especially vulnerable lungs.
Get Your Air Quality Tested Today
If you are concerned about your baby’s risk (or the risk for your baby-on-the-way) for respiratory diseases or difficulty breathing because of poor indoor air quality, contact us to schedule a home air quality test.
Our Hawk Environmental technician will examine everything that contributes to your home’s air quality, from the ventilation and filtration systems to infrared inspections and environmental data testing, to determine exactly what the air quality is. You can rest assured that our tests are unbiased because we don’t offer the repair services necessary to fix any problems we see (although we can recommend those service professionals, if you want).
Indoor air quality has a huge effect on your baby’s health. Contact us to book your home air quality test today!
Featured photo from Wikipedia Commons.
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