Clean air: Healthy homes for allergy sufferers

Just take a deep breath and enjoy the good things in life – that’s what your home is meant for. Allergy suf­fer­ers, how­ever, may find this quite dif­fi­cult. If the indoor air is filled with sub­stances that trig­ger aller­gic reac­tions, they can no longer feel good in their own four walls. Aller­gens should there­fore not be allowed to “sneak” inside. Pol­len and anim­al hair are well-known allergy trig­gers, but also build­ing mater­i­als can con­tain aller­gens. We will answer the ques­tion of how you can best “screen” your home for poten­tially aller­gen­ic mater­i­als.

1. Beware of false advertising promises

Unfor­tu­nately, there is no such thing as com­pletely aller­­­gen-free houses and build­ing products. Some health labels and man­u­fac­tur­ers make mis­lead­ing advert­ising claims. But that’s just hot air. Even if cer­tain mater­i­als stat­ist­ic­ally have a high­er aller­gen­ic poten­tial, every per­son reacts dif­fer­ently. Some aller­gens are also intro­duced in trace amounts by pre­curs­ors – without the man­u­fac­turer know­ing or being able to con­trol this. That is espe­cially true for nat­ur­al products. “Com­pletely nat­ur­al mater­i­als” such as wood, wool or oils can very often trig­ger aller­gies. The decis­ive factor is the indi­vidu­al tol­er­ance of each per­son.

2. Choose materials that are compatible with your allergy

What is well tol­er­ated by one per­son or even edible food can have a ser­i­ous impact on the health of oth­ers. Aller­gic reac­tions there­fore need to be examined on a case-by-case basis. In a first step, it is neces­sary to identi­fy the type of allergy and the allergy trig­gers. In a second step, the interi­or design can be adap­ted to it. For this pur­pose, suit­able build­ing mater­i­als must be chosen that con­tain essen­tially harm­less ingredi­ents and have the least sens­it­iz­ing effect.