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Fast Facts On Children's Environmental Health Childhood Cancer Childhood Asthma Developmental Disabilities Your Children's Products Are Safe, Aren't They?  |
Your Home
Is The #1 Source Of
Toxic Chemicals Because we spend 80% to 90% of our time indoors, and most of that at home, our home is where we are most likely to be exposed to toxic chemicals. (1) This is especially true for young children, who spend even more time indoors than adults and older children. Why are our homes so toxic? In the last two decades - the same period during which childhood illness has increased - there has been an alarming increase of toxic chemicals in household products, and for the first time we have been sealing our homes for energy efficiency. Weather stripping and caulking do an excellent job of keeping the air you have heated or cooled inside your home. But the lack of openings for air to escape also traps chemical air pollutants, resulting in a greater concentration of pollutants indoors than out. EPA studies found that even in urban areas with high concentration of toxic chemicals was higher indoors than outdoors - in some cases ten, twenty, thirty, and even up to seventy times higher indoors!(2) In 1987, the EPA undertook an ambitious program to identify and compare the urgency of environmental problems. The idea was that, with limited resources, the agency should be focusing on those pollutants that pose the greatest risk to society. Among the top hazards were those found indoors, including exposure to cleaning products.(3) Another study, conducted over fifteen-year period, found that women who worked at home had a 54% higher death rate from cancer than women who had jobs away from home. The study concluded that the increased death rate was due to daily exposure to the hazardous chemicals found in ordinary household products. (4) Obviously, the children in those homes were exposed to the same chemicals, with even greater risk for illness. How Do Toxic Chemicals Get Into Your Body? Ingestion - eating or drinking a substance - is the route of most immediate poisonings that lead to accidental death. Young children are especially vulnerable to household poisonings through ingestion. With their natural curiosity, they learn by putting things in their mouths. Inhalation - breathing a substance - is more common, and can be much more harmful than ingestion. Toxic fumes can be released even when a chemical is tightly sealed in it's container. Absorption - admitting a substance through the skin - is an often unsuspected route of exposure. It is now known that any chemical which touches the skin can be absorbed and spread throughout the body. The skin is so absorbent that nicotine patches and analgesic creams administer medications into the bloodstream through the skin. |
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1. World Resources Institutes, The 1994 Information Please Environmental Almanac 2. Lance A. Wallace, The Total Exposure Assessment Methodology (TEAM) Study: Summary and Analysis, Volume 1. Washington, DC. EPA, 1987. 3. Same as above 4. Nancy Sokol Green, Poisoning Our Children (The Noble Press, 1991) |
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Copyright 2006 Green
Kidz R Us. All rights reserved.