Grow­ing Evidence

A grow­ing body of evi­dence sug­gests a clear cor­re­la­tion between use of toxic clean­ing prod­ucts in the home and the devel­op­ment of asthma in children.

It has long been known that chil­dren who grow up with­out expo­sure to bac­te­ria tend to have weaker immune sys­tems. How­ever, it has been dif­fi­cult to estab­lish whether the clean­ing agents used to kill bac­te­ria them­selves play a direct role in increas­ing the like­li­hood of devel­op­ing asthma, as a range of oth­ers fac­tors can influ­ence its onset (e.g. fam­ily his­tory, par­ents who smoke, or the damp­ness of the home). How­ever, stud­ies are now emerg­ing which have been able to take all of these fac­tors into account and to estab­lish the link definitively.

Recent Research

Most famous and com­pre­hen­sive is the ALPSAC “Chil­dren of the 90s” study, based at the Uni­ver­sity of Bris­tol, UK, which sur­veyed 14,000 preg­nant women in 1991–2 and has fol­lowed most of them and their chil­dren ever since. In one strand of their research, they tracked moth­ers’ use of house­hold chem­i­cals while they were preg­nant and when their chil­dren were young. They estab­lished that early life expo­sure to the chem­i­cals con­tained in house­hold clean­ing prod­ucts pro­duces a 40% increased risk of devel­op­ing asthma by the age of seven. In the 10% of fam­i­lies who use the chem­i­cals most fre­quently, the chil­dren were twice as likely to suf­fer wheez­ing prob­lems as the fam­i­lies where they were used least.

Although it recorded what prod­ucts the moth­ers used, the study did not deter­mine the effects of spe­cific chem­i­cals. How­ever, some other recent stud­ies have given a greater insight into this ques­tion. A 2008 pan-European study has estab­lished, for instance, that those adults who use clean­ing sprays at least once per week are 50 per­cent more likely to have increased asthma symp­toms, wheeze, or asthma med­ica­tion use, within nine years, than those who used such sprays less fre­quently. The strongest asso­ci­a­tion was found with air fresh­en­ers, glass clean­ers and furniture-cleaning sprays, which con­tain VOCs, or volatile organic com­pounds. These results have been con­firmed for chil­dren by a recent Aus­tralian study, which found that the strongest cor­re­la­tion with increased inci­dence of asthma among chil­dren, among domes­tic clean­ing prod­ucts, lay with use of VOCs.

Larger Issues

How­ever, as the NHS, in the UK, indi­cates, many other house­hold clean­ing prod­ucts are also highly toxic and can cause var­i­ous forms of irri­ta­tion to skin, eyes and lungs. Indeed, Cana­dian research has sug­gested that some clean­ing agent ingre­di­ents such as dena­tured ethanol (methy­lated spir­its to you and me) can dam­age the ner­vous sys­tem. Chil­dren are par­tic­u­larly vul­ner­a­ble to such effects because their lungs, other organs and ner­vous sys­tem, are still devel­op­ing in inter­ac­tion with their environment.

Many of these chem­i­cals are used indus­tri­ally at higher con­cen­tra­tions, where their impact on work­ers has been tested and fre­quently exposed as highly dam­ag­ing over time. How­ever, lit­tle or no test­ing has been done on their impact at the lower con­cen­tra­tions found in house­hold prod­ucts. And more than 1000 new chem­i­cals are intro­duced every year, whose long-term effects are almost entirely unknown.

This grow­ing body of evi­dence makes a strong case for seek­ing out non-toxic domes­tic clean­ing prod­ucts which will pro­tect chil­dren from asthma and other illnesses.