Cleaning products and their link to asthma

The good news, biodegradable cleaners are finally "en Vogue." Everybody is going GREEN. But did you realize that many of the cleaners that you purchase in the supermarket - and some of the "biodegradable" cleaners that you buy in your local health food store release toxic fumes in your home that can adversely affect your health and the health of your family?

Sadly between 1980 and 1994 childhood asthma increased 74%. Today 1 in 13 kids has asthma. The cause(s) behind this rapid increase in asthma is probably a combination of things, but recently evidence has shown that some of the increase may be caused by early exposure to toxic chemical fumes in the home.

How can that be?

Because consumers demand cleaners that work well and are easy to use - and if no effort is required, all the better! Also because cleaning product manufacturers have been more than willing to oblige consumers by mixing numerous chemicals together in household cleaners and then putting them in convenient spray bottles. And these days with our homes well insulated against the cold, and central air running in the summer, who opens a window to vent those fumes? The result is that those toxic chemicals accumulate in the air that we breathe inside our own homes!

Over the years a number of studies have pointed to an association between toxic household fumes and childhood asthma, including one published in the European Respiratory Journal (31: 54-57, 2008) which was very large and particularly well controlled. The study measured the household chemical exposure of 7,162 pregnant women in England and looked at the incidence of asthma in their children at age 8.5 years. The household products used most frequently by the pregnant women were disinfectants (87.4%), bleach (84.8%), aerosols (71.7%), air fresheners (68%), window cleaners (60.5%), carpet cleaners (35.3%) and pesticides/insecticides (21.2%).

And the results were clear. Higher household chemical exposure during pregnancy was associated with a 41% increase in childhood asthma in children with no known allergies!

What should we learn from this? That it's not enough to select household products that are safe for the environment. We also need to choose products on the basis of their safety for us and our family - not just on the basis of cost and convenience.

For information on the toxic chemicals in common household products visit: http://www.householdproducts.nlm.nih.gov/products.htm)

Pesticides and your food

Unless you're living miles from civilization and eating your own home-grown foods, sadly we're exposed to way more pesticides than most of us realize.

The What’s On My Food website is a fabulous searchable database that has foods from Almonds to Winter Squash -- very informative and a bit Scary!

I hope you'll check it out!