Air quality experts have claimed that drying your clothes inside your house could be making you ill – but there’s a simple solution.
Monitoring Desk
Air quality experts have claimed that drying your clothes inside your house could be making you ill – However they say there’s a simple solution.
Using indoor air dryers to hang damp clothes on, unfortunately has its own downsides.
Air quality experts spoke about the dangers of keeping damp clothes indoors, as the moisture from your washing could be causing mould to fester in your home, which is both dangerous to your health and can cause costly-to-repair damage to walls, ceilings, and window sills.
In buildings, mould is usually caused by a lack of ventilation and increased humidity, and it begins life as fungal spores that float naturally in both indoor and outdoor air.
While fungal spores aren’t usually a problem for most adults, they can be dangerous for children and babies to breathe in, as well as people with respiratory issues or weak immune systems.
But, when these spores settle on surfaces and become mould, it can cause allergies, chronic colds, skin irritation and aggravate asthma and eczema.
The best way to tackle mould in the home is to combat the humid conditions that you might find in particularly problem areas like the bathroom – and drying your clothes indoors won’t help the situation.
Jenny Turner, Property Manager at Insulation Express warned that when drying wet clothes in the house moisture from the clean washing evaporates and settle onto ceilings and walls, making existing mould problems worse.
She said: “To minimize the risk of mould developing when drying wet clothes at home, always keep a window open in the room to allow excess moisture in the air to escape.
“As mould and mildew can quickly build up on walls and ceilings, a further way to prevent this happening when skipping the tumble drier is to opt for a dehumidifier.
“An average-sized residential dehumidifier can effectively remove the moisture from the air in your home and collect up to 7 liters of water over a day in a damp environment.”
Electric dehumidifiers work by sucking in the air, extracting excess moisture into a water tank, and then releasing the air back into the atmosphere again.
Better still, Jenny suggests opening your windows and creating a flow of air through your home – and place salt on your window sills.
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Courtesy: Mirror
