Cleaning Up Out Toxic World: Indoor Air Pollution

​Take a deep breath slowly through your nose. Focus on what you smell. Focus on what your lungs feel like once inflated. Now slowly exhale it.  

Let's talk about indoor air pollution, how it affects you, and what you can do to improve it. 

​On average, most people take around 20,000 breaths per day.  With each breath you take you inhale everything in the air. Quality clean air is 21% oxygen, 78% nitrogen, and 1% other, such as water, neon, carbon dioxide, dust, and hydrogen.
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​How Many Breaths Do You Take Each Day? | The EPA Blog

Air pollution occurs when other substances fill the air at a rate higher than they can be diluted, dispersed, or dissipated. This causes the amount of oxygen in the air to drop to a lower percentage and the air to fill up with particles that are not necessarily healthy to breathe in. OSHA determined that the ideal amount of oxygen in the air for humans to thrive is 19.5% to 23.5%. When there is less than 19.5% oxygen in the air it is a hazard to human health. Mental functions become impaired at 10-14% oxygen. It is not possible to survive if oxygen drops below 6%. Air quality is vital to human health because we depend on it to live, but we also depend on air to be clean to stay healthy.
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10 interesting things about air – Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet (nasa.gov)

​Air becomes polluted from finely dispersed liquid aerosols, finely divided solids, and various gases. The earth itself will pollute the air with smoke and ash from fires, volcanic eruptions, dust and pollen, molds and spores, and other natural phenomenon. Have you felt how difficult it is to breathe when wildfire smoke fills the air, or a wind storm blows too much dust? Have you smelled mold or mildew and immediately felt sick, like you needed fresh air?

Humans also pollute the air with our life styles. Motor vehicle exhaust, dust from tilling farmland, factory and energy production exhaust, and the use of some Volatile Organic Chemicals (VOCs.) VOCs are natural and synthetic chemicals that both vaporize into the air and disperse into water. VOCs are emitted into the air as gasses from solids and liquids. More simply, they are the fumes from your fragrances, paint, cleaners, solvents, varnishes, disinfectants, glues, cosmetics, etc. They also come from flowers, essential oils, and other plants and substances in nature. Not all natural and synthetic VOCs are  harmful, but many are. VOCs in the air that are harmful to human health are called "Air Toxics." Too high of a concentration of Air Toxics pollutes the air and reduces air quality, which can cause you to starve for oxygen when you breathe the air and build up a higher toxic load in your body as they enter your blood stream through your lungs.

​​Take another deep breath, slowly through your nose. Slowly exhale. What you just did is take in air and fill your lungs with it. Your lungs then transfer the oxygen to your blood, while pulling out carbon dioxide waste from your blood so you can exhale the waste out. This process is essential to life. The trouble is that the VOCs we breathe can enter our blood stream through our lungs too. Our lungs have the ability to filter out larger particles in the air, but smaller particles can get trapped in the lungs where they can aggravate conditions like asthma, bronchitis, and emphysema. The smallest particles, however, actually make it into our blood streams. Once in our blood streams, some VOCs might create health concerns. 

"Air toxics are compounds in the air that have the potential to harm our health.  People exposed to air toxics at higher concentrations and over time may have an increased chance of getting cancer or experiencing other serious health effects.  These health effects can include damage to the immune system, as well as neurological, reproductive (e.g., reduced fertility), developmental, respiratory, and other health problems."
Air Toxics and Health | Santa Barbara County Air Pollution Control District (ourair.org)

When you think of air pollution, do you think about the air outdoors first? Indoor air pollution is actually one of the greater concerns. Air toxics, like VOCs, become trapped inside the walls and ventilation systems may not work quickly enough to provide fresh air. We then breathe concentrated amounts of them in the indoor air. We also become used to them and can stop noticing their smell over time, so we don't think about opening a window or running an air filter. North Dakota's Department of Environmental Quality is concerned: North Dakota Department of Environmental Quality (nd.gov)

You're probably not painting, varnishing, using glues, or other industrial products in your home every day...  but you might not realize how many Air Toxics you are releasing into your indoor air regularly: fragrances, cleaning products, formaldehyde, mold growth, new furniture, pesticides, dry cleaned clothing, fabric softener, ink from your printer, markers and art supplies, tobacco smoke, wood burning stoves, cooking in Teflon coated pans, and more.

Do you experience headaches at home? What about brain fog, difficulty concentrating, muscle aches, difficulty breathing, red puffy eyes, poor mood, difficulty sleeping, trouble on the toilet, or nausea? These are common symptoms from regularly breathing in Air Toxics like VOCs.

The Environmental Protection Agency explains:

Health effects may include:
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• - Eye, nose and throat irritation
• - Headaches, loss of coordination and nausea
• - Damage to liver, kidney and central nervous system
• - Some organics can cause cancer in animals, some are suspected or known to cause cancer in humans.
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Key signs or symptoms associated with exposure to VOCs include:
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• - conjunctival irritation
• - nose and throat discomfort
• - headache
• - allergic skin reaction
• - dyspnea
• - declines in serum cholinesterase levels
• - nausea
• - emesis
• - epistaxis
• - fatigue
• - dizziness

The ability of organic chemicals to cause health effects varies greatly from those that are highly toxic, to those with no known health effect.

​Volatile Organic Compounds' Impact on Indoor Air Quality | Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) | US EPA

​The best way to clean up the air in your home is to choose to not emit harmful VOCs. Here are some suggestions:

• Switch your Teflon pans out with ceramic, cast iron, copper, glass, or stainless steel pans. Read more about how harmful the fumes from non-stick cookware can be: Is Nonstick Cookware Like Teflon Safe to Use? (healthline.com)
  
  
• Stop using any body care products with added synthetic fragrances, and switch to fragrance-free or naturally scented with pure essential oils or botanicals. Fragrances are designed to vaporize into the air so that they can be smelled with each breath you take, but they are full of harmful VOCs. Fragrances are not regulated and contain hundreds of unlisted chemicals in a cocktail, some of which have been studied and found to be harmful to human health. We have discussed this in previous blog posts.​
  Cleaning Up Our Toxic World: Household Cleaners! - Terry's Health Products (terryshp.com)
  Cleaning Up Our Toxic World: Xenoestrogens - Terry's Health Products (terryshp.com)

• Do not "freshen" your air with "air fresheners" that only add artificial fragrance to the air, therefore polluting it even more. Instead, remove the source of the smells you're trying to cover up, run an air purifier, or open the windows. You can also use pure beeswax on a candle warmer to help clean your air. Clean air should smell like nothing. If you want your house to smell like something, however, we have much safer options made from natural essential oils, such as Citrus Magic. You can also diffuse pure essential oils. Yes, essential oils do emit VOCs, but not all VOCs are harmful. In this case, they are therapeutic because they release therapeutic natural chemicals and compounds into your blood stream through your lungs.

• Switch to natural cleaners. Read our previous blog post for suggestions.  
  Also... Cleaning Supplies and Household Chemicals | American Lung Association
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• Switch to unscented and natural dishwasher detergent. Dishwashers produce a lot of steam, and that steam is full of the VOCs in the detergent. The VOCs might not just be from the fragrances, they can be from the cleaners too. They quickly fill your indoor air.
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• Choose natural laundry soap that cleans your clothes so they smell fresh, not infuse synthetic fragrances into your clothes. If your clothes still smell after washing, it is often because they are made of synthetic fabrics that are porous in nature and hold onto odors easily. Natural fibers do not hold onto smells as easily. Add oxygen to your load, like our powdered oxygen option from Biokleen. Oxygen breaks down smells, whereas soap just washes them away.

• Switch to wool dryer balls or fragrance-free dryer sheets. The washing machine will release the detergent's VOCs into your own home, but the dryer actually releases the fragrances and other VOCs into the air outside of your home. Have you ever walked around your neighborhood and smelled fabric softener in the air? The fumes your dryer emits can fill the whole neighborhood, polluting the air for anyone else breathing it. This can trigger health problems for those with Asthma, Multiple Chemical Sensitivities, COPD, Mast Cell Activation Disorder, and other illnesses, making the outdoors an unsafe place for them to be. 

• When you buy new furniture, consider the VOCs in it. That "new furniture smell" tends to go away (known as off-gassing) after about a week. You can speed up that process with baking soda or by putting it in the sun. That might not be the end of the VOCs, though, because some of the chemicals used to treat the furniture, such as flame retardants, tend to fly off into the air every time you sit or lay down on it. We recommend watching the documentary Toxic Hot Seat to learn more about this issue and how you can choose furniture without flame retardants.
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• Use a vacuum with a HEPA filter, run that air filter, open your windows, and bring some plants into your home. Plants are known to absorb impurities from the air and create oxygen to freshen up your air. 

​Sources and further reading:
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Volatile Organic Compounds | American Lung Association
Composition of Air - Science Struck
Air pollution - Ozone | Britannica
Pollution Facts What are volatile organic compounds (VOCs)? | Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) | US EPA& Types of Pollution | Live Science
Air Pollution Facts, Causes and the Effects of Pollutants in the Air | NRDC
Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) (usgs.gov)