If your home has an attached garage, you could be unknowingly reducing your home's indoor air quality just by parking your car inside of it. And while an attached garage is a major convenience, using it to store vehicles or chemicals could be harmful to your health. Items that you store in a garage that degrade interior air quality include garden chemicals, insecticides, swimming pool chemicals, any kind of fuel-burning equipment and paints or finishes, as these products emit gases that inhibit long-term health.

A Canadian housing agency published the results of a study that measured the air quality in homes that had attached garages. The findings showed that the air inside a garage can infiltrate a home, even when the connecting door is closed. If you use a forced-air heating or cooling system, each time the air handler runs, you could be sucking in the air from the garage. When you run a kitchen or bathroom fan, air can also enter your home from the garage.

Solutions exist, however, to improve your indoor air quality by sealing the places where the air can infiltrate. The following steps can protect your home from dangerous fumes coming indoors:

• Add weather stripping or foam strips to the door frame connecting the house and the garage.
• Check the wall or walls that are shared with the house. If the walls have unfinished drywall seams, tape them. You can find drywall taping kits at home improvement stores, and it's a fairly simple job.
• Look at the seams at the floor and ceiling of the garage. If you can see cracks or crevices, use caulk to seal them shut.

You should also consider installing a ventilating fan in the garage, vented outside, which will have enough suction to remove hazardous fumes emanating from your garage. After parking the vehicle in the garage, run the fan for an hour to remove the emissions. If you store a lot of chemicals in your garage, run the fan frequently to exhaust the air.

The experts at Tri-County Heating & Cooling in West Chester are happy to answer any questions you have that can help you improve your indoor air quality. 

Man holding breath image via Shutterstock.