particulate matter as a health hazard

Particulate matter is a health hazard that not many people think of on a day-to-day basis. Particulate matter can be found in two places, indoors and outdoors. Many people don’t think about the quality of their air indoors. Many have a tendency to think that inside air always mean clean but that’s not the case. For instance in your home if you don’t use an exhaust fan while cooking your food you can increase your exposure to suspended particles which can lead to pneumonia, emphysema, and other lung diseases. Another danger of particle indoors as well as outdoors is carbon monoxide poisoning. You may see this in the news when it starts to get cold outside. People run generators inside their house not knowing that incomplete combustion of the fuel used creates carbon monoxide as a by product. This intern deprives the people in the area of oxygen and they asphyxiate and die. Particle size matters when it comes to your health the bigger particles in the air can be coughed up or come out in your mucus. The particles that you have to worry about are the smaller particles. These can be so tiny that they are fractions smaller then a strand of hair. These get into the deeper part of your lungs and become trapped in your alveoli. This can cause scaring with prolonged exposure due to your body trying to break down the particle trapped in your lung. This leads to decreased lung capacity and can lead to diseases such as pneumonia. This is a lesser-known work hazard that people seem to not pay attention to and brush it off. This is mainly because these workers will not see the effects immediately after inhalation but rather years after the incident. So next time you go into a workplace or in your own home think of these things and see if they might be affecting you negatively.