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Links to all references can be found at the end of the lesson

Table of Contents

The Problem

As you can imagine, household cleaning products have significantly looser regulations than personal hygiene ones when it comes to chemical toxicity. Cleaning sprays, gels, detergents, floor cleaners, etc. are rarely ever considered as a possible health hazard, because they are not used directly on our bodies.

Indirect exposure, however, is no joke, which is why children born to women who were cleaning maids during pregnancy have a significantly increased risk of certain congenital deformities, and that, in other occupations where women are exposed to similar products, their children are known to have reduced IQ and language skills.

Whether you like it or not, most (if not all) commercial cleaning products do end up interacting with your body through the same entry channels we’ve covered in previous lessons.

• Some of the harsh chemicals you use to clean your bathtub, kitchen counter, and clothes can be absorbed transdermally upon contact;
• Others remain on the plates and cutlery you use at restaurants, if they haven’t been rinsed properly (more on that later);
• Most importantly, many of them are volatile enough to permeate the air in your house after cleaning, which puts an unnecessary strain on your lungs and other organs.

It is precisely this last entry channel that I want us to quickly take a look at first, because it is likely the most pernicious (and certainly the most neglected).

Asthmagens

According to the Environmental Working Group (EWG), over 50% of the U.S. household cleaning products they tested contained ingredients known to harm the lungs. Out of those, 20% of them contained chemicals potent enough to cause asthma in otherwise healthy individuals.

Many cleaning products are used in spray form, which spread millions of tiny volatile particles upon use. Just like it is with micro- and nano-plastics, these invisible particles get suspended in the air and can easily be inhaled by people in the household.

This makes sense: cleaners use (very) harsh chemicals which, when inhaled, are deposited into our lungs and can become translocated through our organism.

Our body (and in particular, our liver) does a great job at detoxifying many of these pernicious compounds, but the stressful load to which our physiology is subject to nowadays—as attested by this whole program—makes this an increasingly difficult task.

Toxic cleaning products may play a role in why nearly 10% of children in the U.S. have asthma nowadays, a significant increase from 3.6% just three decades ago.