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Indoor air can be two to five times (and sometimes as much as 100 times) more polluted than the worst outside air! (Environmental Protection Agency - EPA). Over 7.6 million children (5-17 years) and over 12.7 million young adults (18-44 years) suffer from asthma. (National Center for Health Statistics in a 2001 National Health Interview Study). Research indicates percentage wise there are more people suffering from allergies and/or asthma today than 30 to 40 years ago. This phenomenon has been referred to as "The Sick Building Syndrome". But of course, buildings aren't sick, only the people who reside in them.

Home construction began to change in the early 1970's. The first energy crisis drove people to construct homes "air tight" so we could heat and/or cool them more efficiently and reduce energy costs. By 1994 the typical home contained over sixty-three hazardous products that contain hundreds of different chemicals. (World Resources Institute, The 1994 Information Please Environmental Almanac, Houghton-Mifflin, 1994).

When we pick up a product at the local grocery store or hardware store, most of us would think it has been tested and is safe. Not necessarily so! Here are some disturbing facts:

A product that kills 50% of lab animals through ingestion or inhalation can still receive the federal regulatory designation "non-toxic." (Doris Rapp, Is This Your Child's World?) 

Of the 17,000 chemicals that appear in common household products, only 30% have been adequately tested for their negative effects on our health; less than 10% have been tested for their effect on the nervous system; and nothing is known about the combined effects of these chemicals when mixed within our bodies. (World Resources Institute, The 1994 Information Please Environmental Almanac). In addition, over 1,000 new chemicals are introduced into our environment every year!

Some ingredients listed as inert on package labels may not be "inert". This term may lead you to believe that these chemicals are not toxic or hazardous. In fact, many of the 1,000 different chemicals used as inert ingredients are more harmful than the active ingredients. Even suspected carcinogens (cancer-causing agents) are used as inert ingredients in household products. (John Harte. Toxics A to Z).   
 

 

Judith Berns "The Cosmetic Cover-up" Human Ecologist 43 (Fall 1989)

Formaldehyde, a commonly used chemical product in numerous materials in the home and workplace, is a suspected carcinogen. Formaldehyde can be found in some baby shampoos, bubble baths, deodorants, perfume, cologne, hair dye, mouthwash, toothpaste, hair spray, and other personal care items. It can be found in glues in carpets, plywood and many other building materials. By federal law, modular homes and similar mobile homes have to have a warning label that this home might make you sick.

The Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) which, by law, must be supplied to anyone who uses any chemical product in the workplace states this about formaldehyde. "Suspected carcinogen; May be fatal if inhaled, swallowed or absorbed through skin; Causes burns; Inhalation can cause spasms, edema (fluid buildup) of the larynx and bronchi, and chemical pneumonitis; Extremely destructive to tissue of the mucous membrane."

It should be apparent by now that our indoor environment is not the most friendly place.

• Indoor air pollution is America's number one environmental health concern - EPA
• 50% of all illness is caused by indoor air pollution - EPA
• Indoor air pollution is wide spread. You are more likely to get sick from the pollution from your home or office than from pollution in the air outside. - American Lung Association
• "We have sealed ourselves in our homes and offices with deadly precision." - Marilyn Chase, Wall Street Journal

The body is a very complex, fragile system of chemical reactions and electrical impulses. When you consider a single cell breathes, uses energy, and releases waste much like your whole body does, you can begin to understand how even small amounts of harmful chemicals can affect the performance of the body's processes. Chemicals enter the human body in three ways: ingestion, inhalation, and absorption.

Ingestion

Each year nearly 1.5 million accidental ingestions of poisons are reported to U.S. Poison Control Centers. A partial easy solution is to keep dangerous chemicals labeled and locked and away from children. We don't have time to go into the hundreds of chemicals a person ingests by eating tainted vegetables, fruits, meats and drinking chlorinated water. 

Inhalation

Inhalation is more common and can be much more harmful than ingestion. When you inhale toxic fumes, (one cigarette produces nearly 4000 gases with about a dozen suspected of causing cancer) the poisons go directly into the blood stream and quickly travel to organs like the brain, heart, liver, lungs and kidneys.

Many products give off toxic vapors which can irritate your eyes, nose, throat and lungs, and give you headaches, muscle aches, and sinus infections. This process of releasing vapors into the air is called out gassing. Out gassing occurs in all building materials, paints, lacquers, floor polishes, upholstery, cleaning chemicals and even when a chemical is tightly sealed in its container. If you doubt this, simply walk down the cleaning aisle at your local grocery or hardware store and notice how strongly it smells of toxic vapors even though all the containers are sealed tight.

Absorption

Finally, the potential threat absorption poses is significant. One square centimeter of your skin, an area less than the size of a dime, contains 3 million cells, four yards of nerves, one yard of blood vessels, and one hundred sweat glands. Any chemical that touches the skin can be absorbed and spread throughout the body. This can happen even when you touch a surface that was treated with a chemical.

The critical question is, what level of Ingestion, Inhalation, and Absorption of the thousands of chemicals in your environment and for how long exposure in your "air tight" house will ultimately result in your immune system becoming overwhelmed. No one knows. But at this point "Toxic Overload" sets in.  The time frame for each person is different. The answer lies in your life-time exposure limit to each chemical or group of chemicals, your body mass, your genetics  and a combination of all the above. (For a more detailed but succinct explanation of the problem of long term exposure of out gassing chemicals even at extremely low levels, see the Small Stuff section on this web site: What Is The Issue With Indoor Air?). 

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More about Sick Building Syndrome from the Air Resources Brief

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