Felice Dong | 10/08/2026
On July 15, 2026, a hazy, sepia filter washed over Kingston. Smoke from wildfires burning in Ontario triggered air quality health advisories across New York State, intensified by an ongoing heat wave. The murky scenes looked straight out of a badly color-graded Breaking Bad episode.
Then a few days later, the fog literally lifted. The smoke cleared, alerts expired, and things returned to normal. We could once again savor the Hudson Valley’s beautiful nature with every crisp inhale.
We know the harmful effects of breathing in polluted air—irritation, headaches, and in extreme cases, respiratory diseases, heart disease, and cancer. However, we often limit our perception of pollution to the outdoors, to visible smog. Yet, the average American spends approximately 90% of their time indoors. That is, you probably spent more time breathing indoor air today than you will spend breathing outdoor air this entire week. When you don’t have an ominous orange haze in your living room warning you of possible pollutants, how can you monitor and keep your home’s indoor air quality healthy?
What is Indoor Air Quality?
Indoor air quality (IAQ) refers to the quality of the air in a home, school, office, or other building environment. While it’s smart to close your windows to prevent the open infiltration of outdoor pollutants during times of high pollution, such as recent bouts of wildfires, most indoor pollutants actually originate inside buildings.
Your Stove Isn’t as Innocent as It Looks
Tucked in an innocuous corner of your kitchen is probably your beloved gas stove. It’s unsuspecting, reliable, and cooks up a beautiful plate of pasta. But did you know that every time you light a gas burner, it releases toxic gases such as nitrogen dioxide, benzenes, and carbon monoxide? Within just minutes of igniting that flame, nitrogen dioxide levels in an unventilated kitchen can spike well past the EPA’s outdoor hourly safety limit. Even while it’s off, unburned benzenes in methane gas continue to seep into your home’s air.
Your Walls Are Sweating
Living in New York, we’re all too familiar with that muggy and suffocating air right before a summer thunderstorm breaks. Well, you’re not imagining that unpleasant, wet sensation. Air can hold moisture, and while there are natural phenomena cutting through that humidity outside, unfortunately there are no magical thunderstorms to remedy that indoors. Trapped moisture can feed mold and dust mites, especially in environments such as basements and attics.
The Price of Smelling like Pumpkin Spice and Everything Nice
Cleaning sprays, air fresheners, candles, and plug-ins are all designed to make a room feel cleaner—I mean, who doesn’t want their room smelling like a fresh field of flowers? But many of them, ironically, release pollutants called volatile organic compounds (VOCs) to mask smells. VOCs are carbon-based chemicals that easily evaporate into the air at room temperature and exposure can cause adverse respiratory effects. VOCs like formaldehyde, benzene and ethylene glycol can be found in “fresh scent” products, cleaning supplies, paints, new furniture, and even craft supplies like glue and markers.
A House Needs to Breathe Too
Have you ever been in a room and wondered “just where is that breeze coming from?” Weatherizing a home by sealing all those cracks and drafts to tighten the building envelope is one of the best things you can do for energy bills and comfort. But a tighter house also holds onto whatever’s already inside: cooking exhaust, moisture, VOCs, with fewer places to escape. That’s certainly not an argument against sealing your home, but it should definitely be done thoughtfully. Building scientists often think of the home as a whole system and pair sealing with controlled ventilation, so that you get the efficiency gains without forfeiting your air quality.
What to Do About IAQ?
Now that we’ve identified some common, invisible culprits indoors, the good news is that there’s a lot we can do to mitigate these issues.
- Ventilation: Turning on a range hood and opening a window when you’re cooking with a gas stove can help expel a lot of gases. Running a bathroom fan that’s vented outdoors after showers can also help clear humid air.
- Filters: A good HVAC filter (or a portable air purifier if you don’t have central air) helps pull out dust and airborne particles before you breathe them in. A common mistake people make is forgetting to replace these filters regularly.
- Dehumidify: If a room always feels a bit damp, consider investing in a dehumidifier. Keeping indoor humidity in a healthy range between 30% and 50% makes it a lot harder to mold and dust mites to take hold in the first place.
- Electrify: While filters and ventilation are important, swapping a gas stove for an electric induction stove eliminates an indoor pollution source from your home entirely. Not only is it healthier for your indoor air quality, it also removes open flames, with the added benefit of faster, more efficient cooking.
Learn more about other easy ways to improve your indoor air quality here.
We Want to Help
We want the air you breathe in your home to be as pristine as the “after” photo of MHET’s Kingston office above, but we also understand that improving indoor air quality can be time consuming and costly.
We are here to help!
If you’re concerned about the air quality in your home, you don’t have to figure out what’s causing the problem (or how to fix it) on your own. MHET is your trusted partner in helping you understand what your home needs and managing the process of getting energy efficient upgrades done.
We provide free project management and wraparound support to low-income Hudson Valley residents, helping you access energy assessments, understand and prioritize recommended improvements, navigate contractors, and connect to funding that can help pay for the work.
We don’t expect you to become an indoor air quality or building science expert and diagnose your own house. Instead, we help you access a free energy assessment to identify what’s actually going on in your home and which improvements could make the biggest difference. MHET helps you make sense of those recommendations and turn them into a plan for getting the work done and funded.
Depending on your household and project, that funding could include state incentives like NYSERDA’s EmPower+ program, MHET’s own Home Upgrade Grants, and our ultra-low 2% APR* Home Energy Loans. We work with you to identify what you qualify for and how different funding sources can work together to make improvements more affordable.
Hear how two participants we helped upgrade to induction stoves describe their experiences:
Interested in improving your indoor air quality? Reach out at homes@mid-hudson.energy or fill out our interest form to get started today!
*Annual Percentage Rate (APR): APR is a measure of the cost of credit, expressed as a yearly rate. The 2% APR is available to all qualified applicants who meet our underwriting criteria. Exact APR may vary between 2.0 – 2.5% depending on loan term and amount. This advertisement is not a guarantee of credit approval.