How Long Does It Take for Indoor Air Quality to Improve After Fire Damage?

When a fire burns through your house or business, there is plenty of visible damage: burned furniture, smoke-darkened walls, and ash-covered items throughout the house. However, there is also damage that you can detect with your nose, too: the presence of smoke and other chemicals in the house.

When fires occur in your home or business, the chemicals released can lead to poor indoor air quality for a long time after the fire. How long? The best evidence indicates that, without professional fire damage restoration, it could take weeks or months for air quality to return to normal. In the meantime, the toxic air indoors is not just unpleasant, it can lead to potential health risks, including headaches, lung damage, and potentially even an elevated cancer risk.

What Science Tells Us about Indoor Air Quality After a Fire

Indoor air quality after a fire hasn’t been studied extensively. However, recent research looking at fires burning through communities tells us a lot about how indoor air quality is affected by serious fires.

Measuring Air Quality

In recent research, scientists put instruments to test air quality in a house ten days after a fire tore through a neighborhood. The data showed that, although the house itself hadn’t burned, the air quality inside the house was negatively impacted. The air quality inside the house showed a high concentration of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Ten days after the fire, the level of these compounds was equivalent to a high-pollution day in downtown Los Angeles in the 1990s.

Shortly after researchers set up their instruments, they noted that the VOCs declined rapidly. However, the decline slowed, and significant levels of the compound remained for the full five weeks that they had their instruments in place. When researchers opened windows, the VOC levels dropped significantly, but closing the windows caused the levels to rise again. Researchers noted that the house acted as a sponge, absorbing hazardous chemicals from the air and releasing them slowly over time.

Having open windows and running air cleaners cut down the level of VOCs by more than 50% but didn’t eliminate them.

People Report Symptoms on Returning Home

In addition to specific air quality measurements, researchers also surveyed people returning to their homes in this community six months or even a year after the fire. Six months after the fire, 55% of people reported symptoms like itchy eyes, headaches, dry cough, sneezing, and sore throat. When surveyed a year after the fire, these symptoms persisted, though only 33% of people reported them.

In other words, we know that the effects of poor indoor air quality last at least six months, and maybe up to a year.

What Science Doesn’t Tell Us about Indoor Air Quality After a Fire

Although these studies give us important information about indoor air quality after a fire, they still have their limitations. Most importantly, these are not studies of air quality after a fire inside the house. With that type of fire, you can expect that the level of VOCs and other pollutants could potentially be much higher.

The research tells us that the house acted like a sponge for hazardous chemicals, but it doesn’t tell us where the chemical residue collects.

Finally, science doesn’t yet tell us about the long-term health impacts of this poor air quality. Researchers compared it to traffic related air pollution, so the effects may be similar. This type of air pollution has been linked to cancer, cardiovascular disease (including stroke and heart attack), and respiratory disease.

Get State-of-the-Art Fire Damage Restoration

Although scientific studies haven’t fully characterized the impact of a fire on indoor air quality, the restoration industry has developed techniques to combat indoor pollutants from a fire.

At Cousino Restoration & Environmental, we utilize the most advanced techniques recognized in the industry’s best practices to combat poor air quality. We can eliminate not just the lingering smell of a fire but also target VOCs and other contaminants in the air. Our experts will assess the fire damage, smoke damage, and chemical residue to the property. They can help you identify the sources of contamination and distinguish between items that can be cleaned, either with conventional or advanced restoration techniques. Then you can decide which pieces of property are worth saving, and which are best disposed of to help clean the air.

Cousino Restoration & Environmental is available 24/7 so we can get to your home or business quickly after a fire. We can also handle every aspect of the fire restoration, including:

• Initial safety inspection
• Board-up services
• Removal of salvageable contents
• Content restoration
• Odor removal
• Demolition and removal of debris
• Repair and restoration
• Water damage repair and mold remediation
• Finishing touches to match the damaged areas with original construction

We have over 45 years of experience helping people in northwest Ohio and southeast Michigan to recover from fires and other disasters. Let us help you.

Please contact Cousino Restoration & Environmental’s office in Ann Arbor, MI or Perrysburg, OH.