Is Your House Making You Sick: Why the Air Inside Your Home May be Bad For Your Health

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)]

About The Author: Sloan Barnett is a regular contributor to
NBC's Today Show and the Green Editor for KNTV, the NBC
affiliate in San Francisco. She has been a television and print
journalist for more than 10 years, and wrote a popular consumer
advice column for New York's Daily News for nearly a decade. She
lives in San Francisco with her husband and three children. FMI,
please visit: http://www.greengoe switheverything. com.