healthy home, why?
Why nontoxic, environmentally sound products for the home? The answer is simple: for you and your family’s health. Since the energy crisis of the 1970’s, Americans have made their homes substantially more energy efficient by sealing and insulating them from the outside; these air-tight homes seal in air pollutants. In the same time, the pervasiveness of toxins, pollutants, and chemicals, has dramatically increased. Consequently, the EPA estimates that levels of air pollution inside the home can be 2 to 5 times higher than outdoor levels, and ranks poor indoor air quality among the top five environmental risks to public health. Since most of us spend 90% of our time indoors, it is important that we improve the air quality of our homes. In fact, he EPA and its Science Advisory Board have consistently ranked indoor air pollution among the top five environmental risks to public health.
An inferior household environment is exacerbated by our use of chemicals that find their way into homes through paints, household cleaners, dry cleaned clothes, building supplies, furniture, electronics, cleaning products, etc. Chemicals are ubiquitous in our lives, are continually becoming more prevalent, and their dangers are still largely unknown –basic toxicity testing has not been done for approximately half of the 3,000 high-volume chemicals in commercial use. The cumulative effect of lifelong exposure to industrial chemicals imposes a “body burden”, and the health consequences are largely unknown. Plus these chemicals, once they leave the home, impact the wider environment.
Chemicals are tested, and their effects recorded, in isolation. Hence the effects of “multiple exposure” to many different chemicals interacting is unknown. How the ingredients of an antibacterial soap interact with the chlorine in tap water is unknown, as are the way that the many different chemicals in household cleaners interact with one another. And the list goes on. Such interactions can make our homes toxic cocktails.
What is our indoor air polluted with? A list of common indoor air pollutants would include the following: Combustion contaminants (carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, environmental tobacco smoke); Biological pollutants (animal dander, molds, dust mites, bacteria); volatile organic compounds (formaldehyde, fragrance products, pesticides, solvents, cleaning agents); heavy metals (airborne lead, mercury vapor); and Radon.
