Causes of Indoor Air Pollution

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The quality of air in your home is affected by many more factors than simply what is coming in the window from outside. For instance, if you bought a home in a fresh air country community, your indoors would be highly polluted by out gassing wood, carpets, plastics, furniture, perhaps vinyl linoleum, glues, and more.

And you can open up the windows and over the years this contamination would slowly dissipate. In a city, opening the windows is not the best option, as more pollution blows in.

If you are furnishing a home from scratch you now have the options of purchasing organic fabrics for upholstery and bedding, and even carpets.

ORGANIC FAMILY BEDDING

You also can find organic family bedding, especially important for babies. Mattresses, pillows and mattress covers are easily obtained these days. Natural latex pillows and mattresses can replace the commercial memory foam favorites, which are soaked with the usual flame retardant chemicals as other mattresses.

When you buy new clothes, it is important that you wash them before they are worn. Whether next to your skin or not, these clothes out-gas chemicals that are known hormone disrupting compounds.

CHOOSE NATURAL SOAPS

It is also important that you do not use common laundry detergents, which are made from petroleum products. What you wash your clothes in gets absorbed by the skin, and enters your blood stream. Your detergent shampoos, hand soaps, toothpastes and other cleaning agents are also made with chemicals that you would never allow inside your skin if you knew about them.

The harsh chemicals we commonly purchase to wash our floors, sinks, tiles and tubs with are poison. It is noted right there on the labels. We have been trained to think we have to sterilize our environments on a regular basis, to be safe.

CHOOSE NATURAL SCENTS – OR NONE

The cosmetic and perfume industries are exempt from labeling laws that the rest of us would not be. But if you cannot eat it, you cannot put it on your skin without consequence. However, many organic chemical-free cosmetics, skin creams, moisturizers, shower gels, shampoos and conditioners are easy to purchase. Some are scented with essential oils, many are not scented.

“Energy efficient” homes are sealed so well, that the out-gassing furniture, carpets, clothes, wood, plastics, vinyl, paint, soaps, etc., are all locked in. Yet, an air purifier can solve this problem, and provide an infusion of oxygen into your home.

Here is a short list of the distressing conditions most can avoid by decreasing/eliminating indoor air pollution:

premature puberty

infertility

vicious menopause

testicular and prostate cancers

breast and colon cancers

brain imbalances, mood disorders

Luckily there are factors in our environment we can control. We can control what we eat, choosing organic or locally grown foods. We can choose chemical free pesticides for our home. And we can consume enough green vegetables or add a green foods supplement to our diet, thwarting the causes of indoor air pollution.