Is Your House Making You Sick: Why the Air Inside Your Home May be Bad For Your Health By Sloan Barnett At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

When I was growing up, air pollution was an issue you couldn't ignore, because everybody talked about it. But have you noticed? Hardly anyone talks about air pollution these days. It's not that the problem has gone away completely. So we can all breathe easier, right? Well, no; actually, we can't.

Why? Because while the air in the great outdoors has gotten cleaner, the air indoors has become more polluted with every passing year. The EPA says that in the average home, levels of organic pollutants are two to five times higher than outdoors, sometimes much, much higher. Kind of gives new meaning to the word "homesick," doesn't it? Okay, I can see you looking around your living room in dismay and phoning the nearest hotel. Wait. Don't run away from home. Yes, this is distressing and scary, but it's also good news. Because if we're part of the problem, we can also be part of the solution. There are lots of fairly easy steps you can take to green up the air in your own home. And this is not just about using safe cleaning products, either. Potentially dangerous volatile organic compounds are in and on things all over the house. And VOCs are just the beginning.

First, though, asthma in kids, while a huge problem, is just one piece of the puzzle. Here's what I mean: The rates of adult asthma deaths and illnesses rose sharply for decades; more recently, they have begun to decline slightly. That seems to be the Clean Air Act paying off. On the other hand, here's another statistic: According to a study by the Centers for Disease Control, the prevalence of asthma among adult women is over 40 percent higher than the rate in adult males. Curious, huh? Okay, now let me ask you a question: Who cleans the toilet in your house? Or the tub? Or the sinks? Uh-huh: women.

You know that headache and running nose you've been struggling with? It could be a cold, sure. But it also could be that you're just reacting to the chemicals in your house. That's because the symptoms are similar. They include nose, throat, or eye irritation, headache, dizziness, and fatigue, among others. More severe symptoms can include asthma attacks, other respiratory illnesses, and chemical hypersensitivity. So how do you tell whether you're actually sick or just having a reaction? The giveaway clue is that sometimes these symptoms go away when you leave home. Or maybe you have them at work but they go away when you leave the office, because offices can also be filled with potentially harmful chemicals.

And you know the thing that's really frustrating? While many commonly used household chemicals, and chemicals that come into your household unannounced, cause immediate health problems for some people, we don't yet know enough about the long-term effects. But we do know which chemicals to watch out for, so now let's look around the house for those culprits.

[The above excerpt is reprinted with permission from Green Goes With Everything: Simple Steps to a Healthier Life and a Cleaner Planet by Sloan Barnett (Atria Books, September 2008)]

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