Taking care of loved ones at home in difficult air quality environments
I’m a caretaker. First I took care of my mother as she declined with a terminal disease, and now my father who has limited mobility. Air quality has been on my radar at several points and making them as comfortable as possible is always the goal. We also field questions from clients who are working to solve the same problems, so we’re passing along our best ideas in this article.
If your loved one is bed bound or limited mobility, this can work in your favor because you will have less space in the home to “condition”. In multi-family dwellings like apartments or condos, polluted air often comes through cracks in the walls, floors, ceilings and ventilation, to let smoke (tobacco, marijuana, cooking), odors (pets, garbage, cooking, sewer), particles (dust, smoke particles, vehicle emissions), and chemicals (cleaning chemicals, fragrances, essential oils, etc) into their living space. Whether your loved one is in pain or just has sensitivities to these pollutants, their presence makes life additionally difficult to endure and cope. Here are our suggestions for keeping these pollutants out of their breathing space:
Positive Pressure is the #1 Solution to Stop Contamination in the First Place.
If you have positive pressure in your space, odors, particles and chemicals from other areas cannot come in. It’s simply physics that air moves from high pressure to low pressure, like a balloon slowly leaking its contents. If your room is the high pressure area, it will continuously cause air to move outward from the room, not inward, keeping your space unpolluted. However, you have to create the higher pressure by bringing air in (with a filter) from outside the room. Here’s how to make your loved one’s primary room a positive-pressure space:
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Identify the “freshest” air source outside the room: sometimes it's the outdoors (window or balcony), sometimes it's an exterior hallway.
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You need to draw air from the freshest source, filter it, and push it into the living space to pressurize it. Here are some ideas for the fans and filters you can use. They’re not too expensive!
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Our article shows how to take a window fan and add a filter to it, to draw in fresh air from the outdoors if outside only has some particulates. The problem during winter or summer is that the air outside may be very cold or very warm. But if there is an adjacent room where you can pull the fresh air in and heat it or cool it and let it filter into the bedroom, it shouldn't be a big burden to condition after a little while, because the spaces get pressurized and the fan is not really pulling that much cold or warm air in, it's just topping up the pressure to keep air from the other spaces out.
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This video shows a mushroom farmer who made his lab positive pressure using products like these: 4" inline fan, 4" carbon filter. He used a HEPA filter for particulates, however, if you are most concerned about odors, an activated carbon filter is your best bet. It may be possible to add one after the other (stack them) if the fan speed is not too high (not too much pressure on the fan).
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If you can’t draw air from a window or another passage easily, you can create a Positive Pressure Tent using plastic sheeting and PVC piping as per this post. The air is pushed into the tent via an air purifier to ensure that it’s clean and odor-free. A plastic tent is not the nicest aesthetic environment, but it could be comfortable if your loved one has respiratory problems and the surroundings are polluted. We want to emphasize the author’s note under “structure”: “The enclosure does not need to be airtight; the substantial airflow is sufficient to prevent contaminated air from entering.”
Air Purification is the Next Best Thing.
If you can’t isolate the living space with pressure, then you’ll need to purify all the air in the space. Once again, making the space as small as possible will help you to purify it more cheaply (purchase/use a smaller purifier). Then, purchase the right purifier for the job, or whatever pollutant is most common. We had a client with a landlord/tenant issue, whose loved one was actively dying on in-home hospice. Their landlord was not helpful in regards to her loved one’s sensitivity to essential oils, tobacco and marijuana smoke coming from other tenants, so after contacting lawyers, building code enforcement, adult protective services, hospice, etc., she asked us for help. Due to the nature of the pollutants (odors, VOCs, some particulates), we suggested (after the positive pressure solution) to purchase an air purifier with the most activated carbon she could afford. The activated carbon adsorbs these odors and traps them inside the carbon. Here are several options:
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Many people love the Austin Healthmate for this reason. "The standard Austin Air HealthMate (HM400) features 15 lbs of a granular activated carbon and zeolite blend for odor and gas adsorption." (~$845)
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However, this one may be a better value for the price: Allerair Airmedic Pro 5 Air Purifier has 14 lbs carbon for ~$510.
The problem with this solution is that in closing windows and doors in an attempt to make a smaller space to purify is that the air can still become “stale” because CO2 can start to build up after several hours of not getting fresh air. You’ll want to monitor the CO2 with a sensor; here are some options:
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BREATHE Airmonitor Plus has sensors for eight air quality components and can help you monitor the room remotely, $120
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INKBIRD CO2 Monitor also senses temperature and humidity and is local-reading only, $50
Use temperature to help you create a “pure air zone”
There is a technology that is employed in surgical suites and operating rooms, and now even in homes. We have an article all about it here which is targeted toward allergy-sufferers, but if your loved one is bed-bound, it works in the same way to create a zone above and around their bed of pure, clean air. The main principle employed is gravity: cool air is more dense than warmer air, so it descends. Airsonett Air4 uses the unique and patented technology Temperature-controlled Laminar Airflow (TLA) to release a flow of lightly cooled, filtered clean air towards the breathing zone. The filtered air sinks with the help of gravity and pushes away the particle- and allergen-rich air from the breathing zone. In this way, at least 99.5% of all particles larger than 0.5 μm are blocked from reaching your breathing zone when you sleep.(Airsonett Air4) This technology is expensive but you may contact the company and see if they could loan you one for a reduced rate. AirSonett Air4
Photo: AirSonett
4) If your loved one uses home oxygen, most home oxygen concentrators have air filters, but you’ll have to consult the model manual or ask the medical supply company whether there is an HEPA or activated carbon filter. Home oxygen is delivered at 90-95% pure oxygen to the patient’s nose and/or mouth, but it’s mixed with room air, because breathing pure oxygen can damage their lungs. Therefore even if they wear a mask to receive the oxygen, the mask usually has holes to let in room air. This means that you will still need to adopt one of the above solutions if the air has pollutants, or consult with their pulmonologist for other solutions on how to deliver clean air.
Where there's a will, there's a way! If you can't get them clean air at home, the last resort can be helping to find a place where they can be more healthy and comfortable.
