Principles to Follow to Keep a Healthy Home

Healthy families start with healthy homes. Americans now spend over 90% of their day inside of buildings, whether it is home, school, or work. Building scientists have learned that there is a close connection between the health of a building and the health of its occupants. This is where the "keep it" principles of healthy housing described in the Healthy Housing Principles (HHP) Reference Guide help explain the correlation between building science issues and health conditions.

By keeping a home clean, dry, pest-free, contaminant-free, safe, ventilated, comfortable, and maintained, you can create the healthiest environment for yourself and for your family. These principles are important to anyone who is concerned with how the indoor environment of a home can affect the health and quality of life of its occupants. 

The HHP guide includes instructional language, diagrams, and high quality images describing how to pinpoint and address any issues. This helps you draw any connections to issues you might be experiencing in your own home.

As a friendly reminder, BPI Certified Professionals, and particularly Healthy Home Evaluators, are trained in this approach, looking at how improvements throughout your home work together to provide the best results. Find a BPI Certified Professional by using our locator tool.

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About the Healthy Housing Principles (HHP) Reference Guide

Available in both a print and digital version, the HHP teaches the fundamentals of healthy housing, with each chapter focusing on each of the eight "keep it" principles, and providing examples of how not following each principle can contribute to unhealthy housing situations.

"Many of the homes in this country were built before energy and building codes were established, and often suffer from issues such as excessive energy consumption and poor indoor air quality. As we spend more and more of our time inside, there is a growing concern that the indoor environment may be negatively impacting occupant health. The main goal of this new certificate is to help health professionals, product manufacturers, contractors, technicians, students, and countless others recognize risk factors and use this knowledge to fix issues before they lead to major health problems," said Larry Zarker, BPI CEO.

You can find more information about purchasing the HHP Guide here. Please reach out to hhp@bpi.org with any questions.

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