Easy Ways to Improve Your Home’s Health

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(Family Features) Maintaining a healthy home is a goal most Americans share, but not all are confident they’re doing the best job they can to protect their home’s health.

According to a survey conducted by Second Nature, the nation’s largest home wellness subscription service, 62% of respondents admitted they could do a better job of attaining a healthy home, with clean air ranked as the most critical factor in achieving home wellness.

Gain more confidence in the health and cleanliness of your home with these tips:

  • Remove your shoes when you enter the house. Add entryway seating to encourage guests to take off their shoes. The bottom of a pair of shoes can contain anything from fecal matter to E. coli and pesticides. Leaving shoes at an entryway is one of the easiest ways to combat home pollution and promote a healthy home.
  • Replace air filters regularly. The air filter in your home dictates the air you breathe and ensures that it is healthy enough for ingestion. More often than not, air filters are not top of mind when thinking about home wellness, but they are crucial to every home. That’s why it’s important to replace air filters on schedule – every three months as recommended by the National Institutes of Health.

    If you’re like many homeowners who struggle to remember when it’s time to change your filter, or never have a filter handy when you do remember, you may benefit from a service like Second Nature, which provides a home delivery subscription that ensures your air filters are replaced on time. The company’s high-quality air filters help reduce the risk of contracting allergies, sickness and infection while also ultimately lowering costs associated with energy bills, repairs and health-related expenses.
  • Change out your light bulbs. Choose the right color temperature for a calmer home and use energy-efficient bulbs. The selection for light bulbs is massive, and with smart home technologies that allow you to change the color of your bulb with the swipe of a finger, you can also easily control your mood. Warm lighting typically has an overall positive effect on everyone in the home. One of the keys to home wellness is ensuring you are truly happy in your home, and lighting can play a pivotal role in cultivating this emotion.
  • Open windows on good weather days. Most Americans (61%) believe the air inside their homes is cleaner than it is outside, according to the survey. However, the Environmental Protection Agency estimates indoor air is 2-5 times more polluted than the air outside. This is in part because Americans tend to enclose themselves indoors, where the same air is recycled over an extended time. The smell of the meal you cooked for dinner, the trash in the garbage can and the candle you light on your nightstand all have an impact on the air quality in your home. Opening windows allows for polluted air to release itself from the home and, in turn, allows for cleaner air to circulate the space.
  • Filter your water. Water is essential to any healthy lifestyle, and drinking clean water is a luxury that is often overlooked. However, what is also overlooked is how many chemicals and toxins that can affect your health are in the tap water you drink on a daily basis. Filtering your water is one simple step that can benefit not only your own health, but the health of everyone in the home.

Find more tips and advice for creating a healthier home environment at SecondNature.com.

 

Photo courtesy of Getty Images (parents and child in home)

SOURCE: Second Nature

Who Saves Farm Animals From a Hurricane?

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Kristin Hartness and Jay Yontz’s animal sanctuary Ziggy’s Refuge was responsible for some incredible rescues when Hurricane Florence hit North Carolina. Many of the animals they saved were pigs, chickens, and cows that were trapped in factory farms and left to drown.

“Hurricane Heroes” was directed by Shawn Bannon. It is part of The Atlantic Selects, an online showcase of short documentaries from independent creators, curated by The Atlantic.

Untrashing Djulpan

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“Ŋilmurru bukmak djäka wäŋawu – All of us together, looking after country.

In 2018, Sea Shepherd joined forces with the Dhimurru indigenous rangers of North-East Arnhem Land, Northern Territory for a remote marine debris clean-up mission.

Djulpan is a remote beach, far from any town or city. It is a culturally significant place for the Yolngu people and an important nesting ground for turtles. However, for the past decade, the Dhimurru rangers have been faced with an increasing tide of plastic pollution arriving on their coastline.

Together, the team’s plan was to remove as much plastic from the beach as possible. What they found was beyond comprehension; 250 million pieces of rubbish along the 14km stretch of remote beach. ‘Untrashing Djulpan’ tells their story.

Sea Shepherd is an international, non-profit marine conservation organization that engages in direct action campaigns to defend wildlife, and conserve and protect the world’s oceans from illegal exploitation and environmental destruction.