What kinds of illnesses result from exposures to household products?
A key thing is lung problems because we tend to be exposed to things through inhalation. There are products and materials people use in their homes that can, for example, cause asthma through sensitization. For example, the super glues that are so widely prevalent on the market contain various products that are known from the workplace to be capable of causing asthma, including urethanes and epoxides. Far more widespread is the exposure to chlorine gas from mixing household bleach with other products, because when you mix household bleach with an acid product it produces chlorine gas, and many of the household tile-cleaning products are acids of various kinds. I've already commented on the use of water-repellant sprays—household consumer-marketed products that you spray on upholstery or shoes—as another example of a product that can cause lung injury. All of these examples are lung-related, although some of these products could also cause skin sensitization and skin problems.
Issues that relate to other damage are usually more related to chronic, long-term exposure, and it is very difficult to show cause and effect, even in occupational groups. The challenge is that there needs to be many years of follow-up and large numbers of people being followed. The organomanganese gasoline additive MMT (methylcyclopentadienyl manganese tricarbonyl) is an example of a potential long-term risk to consumers through ubiquitous ambient air contamination. It would take years and years to show it [caused health effects], and by that time the damage would have been done. That's basically what we saw with tetraethyl lead—when we finally had the numbers and the time, we could show there was a decrement in IQ related to fairly low levels of lead, and most of that burden of lead exposure was related to leaded gasoline.
What do you think of so-called green chemicals and products claimed to be "benign by design"?
I would say, "caveat emptor." Sometimes it is very hard to separate out what may just be a marketing ploy from the real thing.
Beyond chemicals, what other factors are you concerned about?
Musculoskeletal issues are very large in the workplace, and the dividing line between what is a workplace and what is your home is not so clear anymore. The standard issues that affect white-collar office workers also affect people who do that kind of work at home, including keyboard and mouse work and the kind of hand and arm problems that may result. But it doesn't have to be purely white collar—some of the kinds of power and high-pressure equipment that in the old days would have been limited to construction workers and agricultural workers are now available to consumers. You can go to a home renovation warehouse store or hardware store and rent nail power guns and high-pressure paint spraying equipment, and these can actually cause physical trauma that can be quite important.
What steps can people take to protect themselves? What are some of the questions we should be asking about the safety of consumer products that we're using?
I think there are a few common sense things. One is that if something simpler will do, then use that. If you don't need to have a coffee cup mug handle re-glued in such a way that two trucks can't pull it apart, then why do that? Why not use a simple, old-fashioned Elmer's-type glue? If you can clean up something with soap and water, why do you need some tile cleaner that could interact with some other cleaner you're using? If you have access to industrial-strength products, don't take advantage of that unless you know what you're doing. Don't mix products unless you have studied the chemistry involved. I think hobbyists should put the same energy they put into their hobby into making sure that the way they're doing it is safe.
See what we're tweeting about
10 Comments
Add CommentNo!!! Are you trying to tell me that all the chemicals we have around our house and in our environment can make us sick or kill us??? I hain't gonna believe that for an instant. You're just one of em'tree-hugers trying to pull the wool over our eyes again and make us believe that we should stop using chemicals that betters our life styles.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat are you going to do next; start telling us to start using em' plant extracts to keep us healthy? I hain't going to fall for that one.
I fully agree with this article. In the name lifestyle, advancement, consumerism (bedrock of capitalism) we are committing suicide and genocide for all fellow living creatures. Basically we are not living in harmony with nature.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe only solution to this to take a slow but steady u-turn. If we make a product we must first learn to envision its impact on environment. This will not happen because we live in a selfish society (for profit only) with no consideration to environment (including our self). We are destroying the balance at a very rapid rate.
We must redefine our objectives to a more balanced sustainable approach rather then just be a corporate model based profit maximization only. Please note we (all living creatures) are based on the same planet earth. What is point in talking about advancement in science and technology when it cannot help us to live in harmony with nature? It can but GREED and EGO blocks it.
Please note that pollution on this planet is also globalised, chemical leak in the ocean can reach across the planet on the back of ocean currents. This is happening as of now.
I am not against advancement provided full care is taken to ensure the benefit for all humans and all living creatures. What goes around comes back?
We are all using the word I and me more often but the fact is we come with nothing and go with nothing. In reality we all want more comforts and to live life in a healthy and less stressful manner.
But this is in reality is not happening, so our wisdom is actually much less then animals? So we are like a beast who is trying to eat itself to death.
There's a lot of good in highly rehulated social democrat capitalism, European style, and even in the kind rather naively envisioned in THE WEALTH OF NATIONS--although over time it collapses into tyranny as easily as communism, and a LOT faster than Medieval mercantilism did. I'm a Medievalist by education, and would I love to see the greedos of Monsanto, for example, sentenced to a month in the stocks, or even better in the pillory where you had to stand up or you'd choke.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJustice for all of is is long overdue. I wish Obama and his thuggish advisors understood that. Geithner is one I'd love to see in the downtown pillory!
I appreciate the authors caution when linking diseases of multifactorial origin with environmental exposures to chemicals of concern. However, A great fallacy in this area of research is evaluating risk in a vacuum. The 59 different naturally produce herbicides in cauliflower have significant biological effects when measured individually but when ingested as the vegetable they are good for you. Such are the limitations of toxicological testing. Further, we happy little humans love to enjoy our preferred risks all the while denigrating those we hold lower value for. If you have ever enjoyed a half liter of wine at any point in your life, you have already exceeded the health risk of ingesting the maximal permissible dose of our worse pesticides for an entire life time. If you enjoy caffeic acid in you morning cup of Joe, order the casket now! That is if you fail to understand the application of modern toxicologic data. Finally, we do not make most products just because we are bored. We make them to protect ourselves from things in our environment that are far worse. As in all thing however there is no free lunch. The question is, how much asthma do we tolerate creating in exchange for reducing the risk of other more severe and immediate conditions. While searching for products with the least adverse impact is all well and good, it must be balanced against those other risks we usually fail to consider.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFailure to read and follow instruction is the cause of many illnesses.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWoodrow C Monte, PhD, Emiritus Prof. Nutrition gives many PDFs of reseach -- methanol (11% of aspartame) puts formaldehyde into brain and body -- multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's, cancers, birth defects, headaches: Rich Murray 2010.05.13
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://rmforall.blogspot.com/2010_05_01_archive.htm
Thursday, May 13, 2010
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/1601
Other formaldehyde sources include alcohol drinks and
tobacco and wood smoke, while adequate folic acid levels protect most people, but not for brain and retina harm.
sweeteners (aspartame), methanol (becomes formaldehyde),
and premature babies in Denmark, TI Halldorsson et al
2010.06.30 AmJClinNutr: Erik Millstone: Betty Martini: Rich Murray 2010.07.08
http://rmforall.blogspot.com/2010_07_01_archive.htm
Thursday, July 8, 2010
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/1609
Without being accused hereafter of being paranoid, would someone please explain to me what is being sprayed in our skies by unmarked planes? I'm serious. Normal contrails, as I understand it, dissipate from a jet plane within seconds or at the most minutes after being expelled from the engines. These things, some people call contrails, hang around all day. I've watched them for at different periods for hours. Upper aircurrents sometimes whiff them around until they start to look like a thin layer of clouds...others stay fairly straight for hours. I've got an open mind, I just need to understand this phenomena.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe've never had a truly laissez-faire system and you know it. The false strawman of "robber-barons" is a myth...it wasn't even near a true laissez-faire system. Politics was then and still is meshed with the free market.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe only way to have true liberty would be the separation of business and state the same way we have separation of church and state. The economy would explode with productivity if that were done and lobbying was criminalized for both the lobbier and the legislator that is being bought.
Ever since I researched parabens and how many products have parabens in them my entire family has switched to mostly organic household items such as shampoos and conditioners, deoderant, and toothpaste. Overall its probably a good idea to stay aware of these random chemicals that have never been tested in a long term study.. no one really knows how certain things interact with the checks and balances of the body. Plus if we have all these chemicals mutating our DNA.. imagine the epigenetic destruction down the road... scary!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe bald eagle didn't have any say about the lead in our gasoline and we almost killed them off. The kid playing in the lead paint chips didn't have any say about that either. Like it or not we are resposible for the health of the whole planet because our decisions and actions have global consequences.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't trust corporations to consider the global impact of their operations. I expect them to earn a profit regardless of the risks. That is why I expect our government to regulate corporate greed that could endanger the viability of this rock. If we trash this rock, we don't have another one to move to.
Any adult injured because they failed to read and follow the label falls into the "Darwin was right" category. Fortunately, this is an instance where corporate greed and gov't regs come together well. The corporations don't want to get sued and the gov't requires that they tell us how to use the product safely. I would like to see all the ingredients in the products I use. There are still too many 'other ingredients' of 'propietary nature' that aren't listed.