During wildfire season, protect your indoor air quality too. Here’s how.

Wildfire season serves as a reminder to take extra precautions when outdoors to protect your health. At the same time, it also underscores the importance of protecting indoor air quality, so we have a place to take refuge when wildfire smoke causes poor outdoor air quality.   

When the air outside is harmful to our health, it’s important to prioritize keeping your indoor air as clean as possible. This is true during wildfire season as well as throughout the entire year. 

Our partners over at Public Health – Seattle & King County have put together a series of videos and graphics that explain where indoor air pollution comes from, its impact on our health, and how we can improve air quality at home. 

Read on for some practical steps to reduce hazardous exposures indoors. 


Where does indoor air pollution come from? 

We often think of air pollution as an outdoor threat, but most of our exposure to air pollutants takes place indoors. Indoor air pollution can come from outdoor air entering through windows or other openings, materials in our homes like paint or insulation, cooking and cleaning activities, dust, chemical use and storage, and more.  

Breathing in pollutants—indoor or outdoor—for long periods of time can lead to health problems like asthma, heart disease, and cancer.  
 

So, what can you do to protect your indoor air quality? 

• Prevention: Take action to stop pollutants from entering the air. Taking shoes off inside, dusting and mopping frequently, choosing safer cleaning products, and avoiding the use of scented products (like air fresheners and scented candles) are all simple steps you can take to prevent pollutants indoors. Avoiding smoking indoors is another key step to improve indoor air quality.  
• Ventilation: Improving ventilation and air circulation can dilute the number of harmful particles in the air. If air quality outside is healthy, you can open windows to bring in fresh air. Place fans in windows to pull in fresh air and blow contaminated air out. It’s also helpful to turn on exhaust fans during and after cooking, while laundering clothes, or taking a shower. It’s important to ensure ventilation equipment is maintained for optimal operation and removal of contaminants.  
• Filtration: During wildfire smoke events, or when outdoor air pollution is high, a portable HEPA air cleaner or box fan filter can help to further improve indoor air quality. These options capture tiny particles from the air such as pollen, dust, and mold. Upgrading the furnace filter to a higher efficiency rating and setting the fan to periodically circulate air is another way to reduce particulates in the air in your home. 

You can find additional details and resources at Public Health – Seattle & King County. 
 

Preventing hazardous exposures in the home 

While prevention, ventilation, and filtration are the most important steps you can take to improve indoor air quality, it's also important to think about the common hazardous products that many people regularly use in their homes. 

You can prevent indoor air pollution by choosing safer products and properly storing and disposing of hazardous waste.  

• Choose safer products at home: There are safer choices you can make when buying products for your home. Look for products with EPA Safer Choice labels and avoid products with words like “DANGER,” “CAUTION,” “WARNING,” and “POISON” on product labels. For tips on reading labels, visit our Safer Household Products page. 
• Use safer cleaning practices in your indoor spaces: In combination with using safer products, safer cleaning practices are effective, affordable ways to keep your home clean while cutting out toxic chemicals that can make your indoor air quality harmful to your health. Check out kingcounty.gov/hazwaste/safer-cleaning for safer cleaning recipes. 
• Safely dispose of hazardous waste you have stored at home: Look around your home for old paint, cleaning products, yard and garden chemicals, and other hazardous products. If you still need them, make sure they are sealed and stored out of reach of children and animals. Don’t need them anymore? Take them to one of our hazardous waste collection facilities for free, safe disposal.