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The Project

If you're like most Americans, you'll spend a big precentage of your time indoors. Most Americans spend 90% of their time indoors, whether it's at home, school, or work.

Since the 1970s, our keen interest in energy efficiency has led us to better insulate and more tightly seal our homes, making many houses virtually airtight.

That's a good idea. But we need to take the same interest in how we ventilate our homes. An inadequate exchange of fresh air - made worse by common allergens and the irritants and toxins found in many building materials, home furnishings, and household products - can result in a breathing environment indoors that is more polluted than outdoors!

At the American Lung Association® of Washington, we know that an inferior interior can trigger a number of health problems, including:

• dizziness
• nausea
• eye, skin, and respiratory tract irritation
• allergies
• asthma

In fact, environmental factors such as indoor air quality are blamed, in part, for the dramatic increase over the last ten years in asthma, a chronic lung disease that affects nearly 15 million Americans.

With the help of Cambridge Homes, IKEA Home Furnishings, and dozens of donors and volunteers, we decided to build and furnish a house that demonstrated to consumers and to builders that the choices they make in building materials and techniques, as well as in interior decoration and design, can have real impact on indoor air quality. And that in turn, can have a real impact on lung health.

This document was published on 04/01/98.
Copyright © 1998 American Lung Association® of Washington.