Your bedroom could be the unhealthiest room in your home

Researchers spent a winter monitoring airtight, naturally ventilated homes across Scotland and found that in more than four out of five, carbon dioxide levels in the bedroom stayed above the safe threshold all night long, even though over ninety percent of occupants believed their air quality was fine. The Conversation reports that once you fall asleep, nobody's left to crack a window when the air turns stale, so carbon dioxide and moisture just build up. That trapped moisture settles on cold surfaces like windows and walls, creating ideal conditions for mould, which the piece notes contributed to the 2020 death of two-year-old Awaab Ishak in Rochdale and led to a UK law forcing landlords to fix damp and mould on strict deadlines. The researchers point to a simple fix borrowed from a German ritual now trending on TikTok as house burping: throwing windows wide open for ten to fifteen minutes right after waking up to purge stale air fast, without losing much heat.

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