Mountain View Pure Water Podcast

Pure Breathing: Your Home's Hidden Air Hazards

• Dan Toth • Episode 10

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 Let's Talk About Indoor Air Contaminants

What if the very air inside your home was silently compromising your health, sleep, and quality of life? That's the reality Dan Toth, owner of Mountain View Pure Water, reveals in this eye-opening exploration of indoor air quality.

Drawing from nearly three decades of experience beginning in 1993, Dan takes us on a journey through the invisible world of air contaminants lurking in our homes. He breaks down the three main categories of indoor pollutants: allergens and particulates (like dust, pollen, and pet dander), infectious agents (bacteria and viruses), and toxic compounds (formaldehyde, VOCs, and chemicals from household products). Most shocking is his revelation that indoor air typically contains 200-500 times more pollutants than outdoor air—a direct consequence of modern building practices that prioritize energy efficiency over ventilation.

The conversation takes a practical turn as Dan identifies common household items that contaminate our air, from scented candles and air fresheners to chemical cleaning products. Those "fresh" scents we associate with cleanliness? They're actually adding more toxins to our breathing environment. Dan explains how these pollutants affect sleep quality, respiratory health, and overall wellbeing, while offering actionable steps homeowners can take to assess and improve their air quality. His recommendations include air quality testing, regular duct cleaning, and switching to plant-based cleaning products without harsh chemicals.

Ready to breathe easier and transform your home's air quality? Dan's expertise provides the perfect starting point for anyone concerned about what they're breathing at home. Call or text 423-218-9361 for a free consultation and discover how Mountain View Pure Water can help create a healthier living environment for you and your family.

To learn more about Mountain View Pure Water & Air visit:
https://www.MVPWater.net
Mountain View Pure Water & Air
2926 Boones Creek Rd Suite #1
Johnson City, TN 37615
423-218-9361

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Mountain View Pure podcast, where your journey to exceptional water quality begins. Here's your host, dan Toth, owner of Mountain View Pure Water. They proudly serve homeowners in the Tri-Cities and beyond, offering advanced water and air purification solutions that support a healthier lifestyle. The mission is clear helping you get great water.

Speaker 2:

Dan explores what's really floating around in your home and how to take control of what you're breathing. Welcome back everybody. Skip Monaco host slash producer, back in the studio with Dan Toth, owner of Mountain View Pure Water. Dan, how's it going?

Speaker 3:

Doing all right, skip, how are you today?

Speaker 2:

Doing fine, doing fine. You know we've spent a lot of time in past episodes talking about your namesake pure water and how that affects your life and why you need need good, clean, pure water, but we haven't touched much on on air, and that's something I know. That's the service that you guys provide, so maybe today we talk about indoor air contaminants.

Speaker 3:

Talk to us about that well, first let me tell you how I found out about air quality products. Before I ever got into water treatment, I actually sold some air quality products back when I was in my teens, back in 1993,. I was approached by someone who had this device that cleaned the air. And I lived in New York State at the time and it was legal to smoke in public places, and so when I saw this device I was like wow, this is pretty neat. It would drop the smoke, smell the smoke out of the air, you couldn't see it anymore, and it would also purify the air by getting rid of the toxins in the odor. And it was just completely amazing to me and I thought that was great. And so what I wanted to do is I wanted to help other people have great air quality in their homes, and so I bought this package of units and I had to pay for it ahead of time, and then I had to go and sell it. I realized at that point I wasn't a really good salesman, but I did learn that if I educate people, they can make a good decision, and so I've based all sales that I've done from that point forward on education. I like to make sure that people have a really good understanding of contaminants and products so that they can choose what's best for them and their family.

Speaker 3:

And so fast forward to 2016, when I moved here to start up my own water treatment business.

Speaker 3:

I had some time in water treatment previously almost a decade and I wanted to help the East Tennessee area with the water quality here, as my family and I moved here and we just love the area. And as I got started, I wanted to focus on water treatment because that was the point of my company, and so for about five years I established myself as a water treatment expert and then I moved into bringing in air quality products to remove the toxins from the air that we breathe, as well as from the water. So that's just a brief history of why air quality to me is a really big deal, because I personally don't have any allergies. I have no understanding of how bad it is for people who do, except for every once in a while if I breathe in too much pollen it clogs me up. But having indoor air quality fixed, removing contaminants is just a wonderful thing for people who have allergies seasonal, animal or other issues that they're breathing in their environment.

Speaker 2:

Wow. Well, let's talk about some contaminants. What's the most common air contaminants that can be found in a home?

Speaker 3:

Well, of course, everyone knows about dust, dust in the home, you know, the human body sheds something like a pound of dust each year, and so we accumulate a lot of dust in the home, and a lot of that can be removed by vacuuming and just washing your clothes and laundry, but some of it will accumulate on floors, you see it on shelves and and also get picked up in your filter for your air circulation system, and so dust is just often dead skin. Things that feed off of dust are dust mites, and and then, depending on how clean your home is, you may have animal dander same thing, just dust. If you have animals, you'll have a lot more hair, and so those are some of the things that we think about when we think about contaminants Also. So there are three different types of indoor air contaminants. Okay, there are three different types of indoor air contaminants.

Speaker 3:

Okay, so we have allergens and particulates, which is dust, and that can be mold, pollen, mildew, fungus, tobacco smoke, wood smoke If you have a wood burning stove. Vehicle emissions um, it can be dust mites, pet allergies and um, an insect, um, debris, debris, things like dead insects. So then you have infectious agents. So allergens are particulate infectious agents. Those are things like what you think of if we get sick and we need to stay home from work bacterial infections, strep, pneumonia, viral infections, influenza, common cold, sars, covid SARS of any kind. They're really all the same. We had a big hysteria during the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic and the reality is that it is also treatable with the same devices that treat other airborne contaminants and bacteria, and so we have allergens in particular.

Speaker 3:

It's our first category.

Speaker 3:

Infectious agents is our second category, and then toxic compounds, and this is the one that a lot of people are very affected by but we don't necessarily think about in our homes, especially if you have a new home or freshly painted or you've gotten some new vinyl or plastic coated anything in the house.

Speaker 3:

You'll have formaldehyde, you'll have the seeds from the off gassing of those products, you might have other things like pesticides come into the house and also just mold or things like that in an older home. So it's really important to make sure that our, our home air is filtered regularly and that the contaminants that can be growing are broken down and destroyed, and the contaminants that can be growing are broken down and destroyed and the contaminants that are gases that are fumes off of products that we purchase, that those are also broken down and dissipated, because that's where much of our discomfort breathing issues, allergies come from those sorts of things in the home, and when you don't have good air quality, your sleep suffers, your productivity suffers, just quality of life is less, and so bringing good air quality products into the home is very helpful to people who suffer from those issues.

Speaker 2:

Wow, that's a lot. That's pretty scary actually.

Speaker 3:

When you think about it. What about cleaning products? I mean, I'm sure that if you don't have good ventilation, good air I'm sure that contributes as well are not necessarily our friends. We make them for the purpose of cleaning difficult to clean things, for instance, lysol, chlorine any of the things that make an aerosol can work. Things like that can be very hazardous to our health. Certain people are more susceptible to that and therefore they have a greater reaction or response physically, but we all. It's dangerous to all of us, and so the more we can remove chemicals from our home, the better we are for that.

Speaker 3:

One of the things that I do with water treatment and this is this kind of fits, what we're talking about, funny enough is, when I provide water treatment, I also have an option for soaps and cleaning products that people can get that are they're plant-based, there's no dyes, no perfumes, they're hypoallergenic, and without the chemicals in the soaps and cleaning products you can really clean up your home. All this stuff being sold in the store. It has to have chemicals to make water, to make suds on non-conditioned water. It has to have chemicals to clean up the harsh scaling from soap. Scum and soap curd on walls and you know, one of the funny ones is jet dry. People use jet dry on their dishes. I'm not sure what they think happens to that drying agent that makes it streak free, but as soon as you use that glass you're getting some of it in your water or whatever you're drinking.

Speaker 3:

It's just another chemical that we use in our homes. We don't even think about it. There are a lot of people who like to use these plug-in devices that emit scent constantly. Other people like to burn incense or something else in the home. I mean, you're going to be breathing the ash, you're going to be contaminating your air with any one of those. Candles are another one. It's like, yeah, they smell good and we enjoy that, but often we're using those chemicals and devices to clean the air quality that we didn't like already and it's just kind of adding more stuff to the air. Wow.

Speaker 2:

Well, let's say my house is contaminated with all sorts of nasty things. What are the first steps that I, as a homeowner, can take to start purifying the air or go headed in the right direction?

Speaker 3:

Yeah. So since we spend about 90% of our time indoors, it's really important to have the air quality improved. The funny thing is, because of building standards since the 70s, our indoor environment never gets exchanged in most homes. Some people have an air exchanger on their air conditioner. If you're in a public building, it has to have some sort of air exchanging happening, but we typically find that indoor air environment is about 200 to 500 times more polluted than outside, and so if you're concerned about the outside air in the neighborhood you live in, think about the indoor air quality as being two to 500 times worse than that typically.

Speaker 3:

So if you find that you have allergy issues whether it's from animals, or maybe you're sensitive to certain chemicals, or you're getting sick often in your home, you may realize that there's some issues there. That you want to clean up the indoor air quality, and that's probably the first indicator is I'm not comfortable at home, I don't breathe well, I'm getting ill often. Those are things that are indicators that you want to get your air quality checked so step one, get your air quality checked yeah, I get your air quality checked.

Speaker 3:

One of the things that we use, just a simple thing, is air air particle tester. So we have this meter that we stick in your room and it draws air through the meter and it, laser, counts the particulate and so we can see kind of hey, do you have good air? Do you have poor quality air? What level of air quality are you breathing in your home? And that way we can kind of figure out, hey, as far as particulate goes and allergens, can we remove some of that to give you some relief? Then there's the issue of infectious agents and compounds.

Speaker 3:

If your home is sick, if it has mycotoxins and mold, mildew, you know just some different growth, fungus growth or something like that that can be related to humidity or just being an old home that hasn't been cleaned well, your air duct systems need to be cleaned as well, probably every five years or so.

Speaker 3:

It's a good idea just to make sure that things don't build up and keep recirculating as the airflow is happening in your home. So that's sort of what we would like to figure out is hey, are you breathing poorly because your home itself just needs cleaned in some ways that maybe you haven't thought about. Your home itself just needs cleaned in some ways that maybe you haven't thought about. Is it because of things that you're doing, maybe candles or incense or something else, causing respiratory issues for you or someone else in your family? Or is it things that are brought into the home, maybe VOCs from materials or maybe some illness that keeps that causes you to be sick? That's another product that air purification can provide that helps to break down that stuff with sanitizers that are safe for you but will clean up the home and make it to save for the whole family very, very interesting and deep subject.

Speaker 2:

Would love to touch base on this again, on air quality and what we need to do to protect ourselves in a future episode, if you're cool with that.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I'd like to talk about the different products and filters and things like that that can help with the home environment. So, yeah, let's talk about that next time.

Speaker 2:

All right, man, I look forward to it. Dan, thanks so much as always. We appreciate you clearing the air, pun intended. Appreciate your knowledge and we'll see you next time on the mountain. View your water podcast. Thanks, skip have a great day on the.

Speaker 3:

Mountain View Pure Water Podcast. Thanks, Skip.

Speaker 1:

Have a great day. Thank you for joining us on the Mountain View Pure Podcast. When you're ready to transform your home's water and air quality, call or text 423-218-9361 for a free in-home consultation. For more information, visit mvpwaternet. Remember, great water is the foundation of a great life.