Unhealthy Cleaners
You must clean your house in order to stay healthy, right? Yes, but not the way you might think. You do not need chemicals in order to kill germs, remove grease or clean clothes. There are plenty of natural alternatives that do the same job without the toxic exposures. But what about the kitchen and the bathroom, you might ask? Fear not, because no matter what room of the house you need to clean, there is a nontoxic alternative that will work for you.
You are exposed o a variety of untested chemical each day. Many of these chemical could be ingredients in your household cleaners. While there has not been a lot of uproar about the use of untested chemicals in many other common household products, there is a growing groundswell of concern about the use of potentially hazardous chemicals used in the stuff that you clean your home with every day. That is because modern medicine is quickly learning that what you use to clean your countertops has a nasty way of ending up inside you.
Unhealthy Cleaners
So you might be exposed to cleaners in more ways than you had thought of. Is there any harm in that? Yes. Countless studies and research have shown that chemical-based cleaners not only cause short-term problems such as headaches and dizziness, but a whole host of other more life-threatening problems, too.
Cleaning products are one of the major sources of VOCs for homeowners, so they are also one of the easiest opportunities to rid your exposure to these unhealthy compounds. How can VOCs affect your health? VOCs can affect everyone differently, but they been show to cause problems such as:
- Eye, nose and throat irritation
- Asthma
- Allergies
- Headaches
- Fatigue
- Allergic Skin reaction
- Loss of coordination
- Memory impairment
- Nausea
- Liver and kidney damage
- Central nervous system damage
- Cancer
Secret Ingredients
Under the Federal Hazardous substances Act, manufacturers are not required to list all ingredients of household cleaners. This is so that they can protect their cleaning recipes, which are considered a trade secret. But it also means that manufacturers could put anything that they want to in your cleaner, unless it has been specifically banned by federal government (very few chemicals are), and you will never be aware of it.
Ingredients to Avoid
There are some chemicals in cleaners that you definitely want to avoid, such as chlorine, ammonia and lye. The problems is, thought, that you can’t know for sure if a cleaner even has these chemicals in them because they are not required to list the ingredients. Even if all of the ingredients were listed, there are so many that can be used in a cleaning product that it would be near impossible to have a handy list of what to avoid and you would need a science degree to pronounce and understand them all.
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