With the onset of the spring season upon us, it’s a perfect time to rejuvenate your home with a good, deep spring cleaning. And while many of us think of spring cleaning as a seemingly innocuous but frustrating undertaking, it still comes with a variety of potential threats to our indoor environments. Purely Green Environmental has provided indoor air quality testing in Massachusetts for almost a decade now and we’ve observed that a wide array of common household products contribute to an alarming amount of pollutants in the air. Yes, the very same products many of us use to clean our homes actually introduce a potentially harmful amount of harsh, manmade chemicals into our indoor environments.
In fact, according to data gathered by purezing.com, the average American home has about 3 to 10 gallons of toxic materials in it, all of which come in the form of common household cleaning products. Your traditional household cleaning products are deceptively made up of a great deal of potentially harmful chemicals. Manufacturers of these cleaning products are not subject to FDA or EPA enforced statutes that make them list the ingredients. This way, the average consumer isn’t fully made aware of exactly what type of chemicals they’re introducing into their air. Air quality testing in Massachusetts is the only real way to find out what types of chemicals are present in your indoor environment.
What’s In Your Cleaning Products?
What are especially troubling are the known chemicals that are suspected to be carcinogenic in nature. Some of the hazardous chemicals found in common household products are glycol ethers, phosphates, volatile organic compounds, petroleum solvents, perfumes, formaldehyde, chlorine, butyl cellosolve, and sodium lauryl sulfate. Many of these chemicals are suspected carcinogens while others are known to cause a variety of health problems ranging from nose and throat irritation to asthma to organ failure and more. These chemicals enter our bodies through our skin or lungs, bypassing our kidneys and liver (which are our natural deterrents against harmful chemicals), and directly enter our blood stream. Even in small doses, this type of exposure can lead to a myriad of health problems. Air quality testing in Massachusetts will let you know what type of chemicals you may be exposing your family or co-workers to while spring cleaning.
So what should we use when spring cleaning? Well, there are a great deal of ways to use common household products like baking soda and vinegar to clean your home or office. In an article entitled, “Spring Cleaning: The Non Toxic Way,” writer Dr. Mercola provides an extremely helpful list of recipes made up of natural common household products that effectively work to clean your home or office. Purely Green Environmental encourages you to peruse this list and think about spring cleaning in a healthier and happier way.
If you’re interested in air quality testing in Massachusetts, contact us at: (888)-291-3773
