Attacking The Problem Of Indoor Air Contaminants

Until recent years, indoor air had a rapid turnover in older structures because many openings allowed heated air to flow out and cold air to flow in. Noxious odors, radon, other gases, volatiles and particulates emanating from an array of sources, including paint, rugs, pesticides, office clutter and microscopic arthropod body parts, are no longer being diluted with enough outdoor air. The buildups of indoor air pollutants may now be 10 to 100 times higher than concentrations in the outdoors.

THE COST OF POOR AIR QUALITY. A U. S. government agency estimates that 50% of absenteeism is due to upper respiratory problems from “sick” buildings and that more than $100 billion a year is lost to productivity and medical costs. I learned this thanks to an invitation to sit in on a workshop of the Indoor Air Quality Association in Boca Raton, Florida. I was invited by Carlos Gonzalez, a PCO from Puerto Rico, who has gone into air duct cleaning in a big way while concurrently serving as a pest management consultant. The four-day workshop dealt with methods to correct problems with IAQ, which includes air duct cleaning and other strategies.

My pest control interest was piqued by references to pesticide chemical pollutants and to pollution by house dust mites and other arthropod particles. In my August 1997 column, Pesticides That Don’t Stay Put, I described the work done by Dan Stout III at North Carolina University, which showed how readily particles are moved about indoors. While there is no valid scientific study that shows that these translocated molecules are a significant health problem, in our litigious society, the presence of traces of pesticides cannot be treated lightly.

PROBLEMS WITH DUST MITES. The house dust mite problem, however, is more significant. In my March 1997 column, House Dust Mites Creating a Stir, I wrote about the recent frightening rise of serious illness and death from asthma, caused in part by the high level of house dust mite allergens in the dust load in homes. People and pets have always shed the same amount of skin particles, but tight homes of energy conscious owners have increased this food source to cause a proliferation of house dust mites. Adding to the problem is the recycling and accumulation of microscopic particles in homes not trapped by ordinary household vacuum cleaners. Airborne particles from cockroach populations in public housing also have been implicated in serious asthmatic outbreaks.

Among the contaminants of indoor air in commercial buildings are microbial particles from houseflies electrocuted by some insect light traps. This is described in a paper by M. J. Tesch and W. G. Goodman of the University of Wisconsin in the International Journal of Environmental Health Research, Volume 5, pp. 303-309 (1995). Four different high voltage conventional light traps were placed in a large plexiglass chamber into which houseflies were introduced. Petri dishes containing nutrient agar caught substantial numbers of microbial agents from the dismembered bodies of the electrocuted flies. Considering that a fly contains six million bacteria on the surface and 25 million internally, Tesch and Goodman considered such contamination potentially serious.

It is a Myth Conception, I think, for pest management professionals to overlook the importance of their role in the battle to improve the quality of indoor air and to lessen the SBS of the buildings that they service. Pest management professionals should have alliances with air duct cleaners to complement the duct cleaning operation. The pest management professional with an industrial backpack vacuum cleaner, such as the Li’l Hummer, could remove pockets of mite infested dust and cockroach debris elsewhere in the home. This would be a valuable service to the thousands of patients suffering from allergens from house dust mites or cockroaches.

Harry Katz, a contributing editor to PCT, may be contacted at Berkshire E-3076, Deerfield Beach FL 33442, 954/427-9716.