Poor IAQ makes it challenging for our skin to ‘breathe’
Monitor your IAQ management plan to avoid unintended health consequences
When studying the relationship between IAQ and health, we tend to focus on exposure to contaminants through breathing. This is understandable, given the recent and very disruptive pandemic due to the SARS-CoV-2 virus that is primarily transmitted through the air. Even before COVID-19, we knew that airways provide key entry points for all sorts of contaminants, both infectious and noninfectious, potentially leading to diseases in systems beyond the lungs, such as the heart, brain, blood, and more.
Limiting the exposure of our respiratory system to poor IAQ is clearly important; however, we’ve neglected managing the impact of IAQ on our largest organ: our skin. Strategically located between the outside world and our inner physiology, skin has the challenging task of preserving carefully tuned internal conditions, while the external conditions can fluctuate widely. Skin cells sense, categorize, and respond to environmental signals, which range from pleasurable to life-threatening. It also plays a key role in maintaining a tightly controlled core temperature through evaporation of sweat and regulating blood circulation close to our body surface. The fundamental functions of detecting and responding to changes in external environments involve the production of hormones, neurohormones, and neurotransmitters that act both locally and at the systemic levels.