I have been focused on air quality ever since I was took care of with asthma at the age of nine.
Back then we weren’t sure if I was simply sensitive to seasonal flu symptoms, or if it was something more.
The dentist prescribed me 2 weird inhalers—one to use yearly, and another to use whenever I had dire difficulty breathing. To our luck, I never had several dire asthma attacks, and I was fortunate to have our inhalers on me in both instances. But that’s actually because I don’t put myself in situations where I could be at extreme risk, such as a camping trip deep into the woods anywhere remote. Even if I am conservative about what I do in life to mitigate risks for asthma triggers, I can inadvertently expose myself to a completely weird set of problems here at home. I bought and installed a wood stove this year without fully understanding the need for adequate ventilation. The chimney hadn’t been cleaned in a number of years and that was a critical error. Thankfully I live in Orland Park, Illinois and I had carbon monoxide detectors already installed throughout our house, otherwise I wouldn’t have l earned that a wood stove could produce carbon monoxide. That’s the morning when I l earned that even candles produce minute amounts of carbon monoxide, but a wood stove is a much larger fire. After I put the fire out, I called a fireplace and woodstove specialist and that’s when they discovered the soot buildup in our chimney. Now I can finally use our wood stove without worrying about poisoning our indoor air.