Can wood fibre improve indoor air quality? – CIJA | Ep.40

In this episode of Can I Just Ask…, we take on a question we hear a lot from people using natural materials: does wood fibre internal wall insulation improve indoor air quality? The honest answer is indirectly, yes — but maybe not in the way you’d expect. Indoor air is a controlled space, and it’s almost always less healthy than good outdoor air, so time spent outside still does the most for you. Where wood fibre helps is in what it’s not: its organic, largely single-material composition — especially wet-process board bonded with its own natural lignins and resins — is benign compared with some man-made mineral fibre alternatives, and it has a genuine ability to buffer humidity, smoothing out peaks and troughs in indoor relative humidity. But that buffering only works alongside proper ventilation, and wood fibre is never a substitute for it. As we explain, well over 99% of the moisture your household produces still needs to leave through ventilation, not through breathable walls — so “my walls are breathable” is never a reason to skip it. Watch the full explainer below.