Personal Indoor Air Quality Checklist for Indian Homes | indoorair.guide

Personalised indoor air quality checklist for Indian households. Pick a scenario — cooking, sleep, infants, pets, asthma, work-from-home, monsoon, renovation, and others — to get prioritised actions for that situation, with inline citations from CPCB, WHO, ASHRAE, and peer-reviewed studies.

• 12 universal IAQ actions every Indian home should follow
• 14 persona-specific scenarios covering daily, event, ongoing, and yearly exposures
• Three response layers per action: act now, set up once, watch over time
• Inline citations to CPCB, WHO IAQ guidelines, ASHRAE 62.1, and journal studies
• Deep-linkable scenarios via ?scenario= query parameter for sharing or bookmarking
• Fully client-side — no account, no backend, no tracking of personal answers

Universal actions for every Indian home

The checklist starts with 12 actions that apply regardless of household type. They cover ventilation timing against outdoor AQI, purifier placement, VOC source reduction, filter-change cadence calibrated to Delhi-level PM2.5 loading, and a seasonal pivot from PM-focused defence in Oct–Mar to humidity-and-mould control in Jul–Sep.

Each universal action is tagged to the relevant Indian standard or research finding — for example, CO₂ ≥ 1000 ppm in bedrooms is linked to Norbäck et al. (2023) on sleep quality, and the 0.35 ACH residential ventilation minimum is referenced to ASHRAE 62.1.

Persona-specific scenarios

Pick one of 14 scenarios to surface actions calibrated to that situation. Each persona lists the underlying concern (e.g. CO₂ for cognition, PM2.5 spikes from cooking, off-gassing from new furniture) and three layers of response.

• Work from home — focus, CO₂ build-up, sustained 6–9 hour exposure
• Exercise at home — 3–5× higher breathing rate amplifies PM and VOC intake
• Frequent home cooking — India’s largest daily indoor PM2.5 source
• Sleep environment — 7–8 hours with no real-time correction possible
• Pet at home — dander, hair, and litter as always-on sources
• Toddler at home — developing lungs and floor-level exposure
• Respiratory condition — asthma, COPD, allergic rhinitis, seasonal allergies
• Sick person at home — distinguishing infectious from recovery scenarios
• Hobby classes at home — occupancy spikes and activity-specific VOCs
• Renovation or new home — the largest VOC event most homes ever see
• Seasonal calendar — Delhi’s four air quality seasons mapped to actions
• New furniture — formaldehyde and TVOC off-gassing that can last months
• Large or joint family — multi-session cooking and cumulative exposure
• Sleep or health conditions — sleep apnea, CPAP users, elderly residents

How the three layers work

Every recommendation belongs to one of three layers. "Act now" items are low-cost habit changes you can apply today: opening windows when AQI < 100, closing them when it spikes, or moving incense out of the room you work in.

"Set up once" items are one-time decisions like sizing a purifier to the room you actually spend time in, placing it 30–50 cm from walls for airflow clearance, or switching one frequently-used cleaner to a low-VOC alternative. "Watch over time" items are ongoing checks — quarterly filter inspection in Delhi, monsoon-month humidity audits of bathrooms and AC drains, and pre-October HEPA replacement before the worst six weeks.