Household chemicals rival vehicles as smog source

[FarCenter]

Everyday items such as soaps, perfume, paint and pesticides now contribute as heavily to certain sorts of air pollution in US cities as cars and trucks — a finding that surprised even the researchers who made it.

Volatile organic compounds contribute to the formation of ozone and the fine airborne particulates that make up smog, which is linked to health problems from asthma to heart disease. Cars and trucks have historically pumped out most of these compounds, along with other pollutants such as nitrogen oxides. But significant levels of volatile organic compounds also escape from household and commercial products, according to a study published on 15 February in Science1.

“The things I use in the morning to get ready for work are comparable to emissions that come out of the tailpipe of my car,” says Brian McDonald, an air-pollution researcher at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Boulder, Colorado, who led the work. “I think that’s what surprises a lot of people.”

Regulations to make vehicles cleaner have markedly reduced their emissions over the past 50 years. Yet notoriously smoggy cities such as Los Angeles, California, still struggle to comply with federal air standards. An extensive NOAA air-sampling effort in the city in 2010 found surprisingly high levels of certain volatile organic compounds that couldn’t be linked to vehicles. So McDonald and his team set out to track down other sources of the pollution.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-02132-9

[womanofthehills]

1. Check out all the stories of people with multiple chemical sensitivity and you will see this is true

They are the canaries.

[FarCenter]

2. Yes, and if household chemicals contribute this much outdoors, indoors must be far worse!

[TeapotInATempest]

3. Or people with asthma.

My son has asthma, and when he was a child we learned very quickly that he reacted worse to household chemicals than to poor air quality days. We had NO fragranced personal care products in the house, NO candles - scented or not - NO typical household cleaners (I do not need my house to smell like "pine" or "mountain breeze" to know when my house is clean).

As someone who suffers from eczema and hives, my skin improved tremendously as well. I can't even tolerate walking down the laundry detergent aisle of the grocery store anymore. Seriously, once you've removed those fake scents from your life, you realize how terrible they actually smell.

[FarCenter]

5. An acquaintance suffered severe sinus infection from nebulizing "essential oils".

That seems far worse than scented candles.

[TeapotInATempest]

6. Essentials oils are nothing to be messed with; they are powerful

and are not appropriate to be inhaled by people with respiratory issues.
But no, they really aren't worse than candles. Paraffin candles, scented or not, release dangerous pollutants like toluene when burned and those pollutants are bad for everyone. Soy candles are probably a better choice if people really want to burn candles at all.

[procon]

4. I have severe respiratory problems and everything effects my ability to breathe.

Even cleaning products labeled as environmentally safe, no scents, etc, off gas a miasma of invisible and odorless chemical fumes. I can tell because they trigger a fit of wheezing and coughing requiring a nebulizer treatment. All those fumes have to got to go someplace, like polluting the air. I mostly use plain extra strength vinegar and coarse salt now, and have fewer health problems.