make a clean sweep - home cleaning and respiratory ailments

Vegetarian Times, Sept, 2000 by Victoria Moran

Feeling ill? It could be your housekeeping habits

The last child I ever expected to be sickly was my little Rachael. I'd done everything right: natural birth at home, extended breast-feeding, a whole-foods vegan diet. Yet Rachael was diagnosed with an ear infection before her first birthday and suffered from colds, earaches and bronchitis throughout her childhood. We tried alternative therapies to strengthen her immunity--acupuncture, chiropractic, reflexology, homeopathy, herbs--and during acute bouts followed the advice of pediatricians and gave her decongestants and antibiotics. Just when I was about to give up hope, a friend told me about a wonderful holistic M.D., who suggested something new. She told me that even though Rachael was eating a healthful diet, she was breathing poor air. Ironically, the things I thought were "good" about our home turned out to be precisely what were making her sick. Our house was well insulated, which was great for preserving heat in the winter, but it allowed little exchange with fresh outside air. This meant that we were breathing the old, stale stuff. I also had cleaning people come every Monday. I thought the smell they left in their wake for 24 hours was "clean." It turned out to be toxic.

So instead of treating Rachael, we decided to treat our house. We opened windows and installed exhaust fans. We banned our beloved pets from Rachael's room to cut down on dander there. We installed air cleaners on every floor. And I opted to do my own housecleaning, using gentle products that didn't aggravate my daughter's condition. She improved rapidly. And I learned that "clean" smells good.

It turned out that Rachael was suffering from three of the four most common respiratory diseases: allergies, sinusitis and bronchitis (asthma being the fourth). According to the National Center for Health Statistics, 93 million Americans--or one out of three--are affected with one of these four illnesses. Treatment for these conditions can be abetted by removing as many synthetic chemicals as possible from our indoor environment. And even though the chemicals in cleaning products are not allergens per se (like animal dander or ragweed), they are major irritants to an already sensitive respiratory tract.

While respiratory ailments are reason enough to consider more natural cleaning products, they're a necessity for anyone suffering from a debilitating condition called Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS). People with MCS may react adversely to pesticides, solvents and other synthetic compounds. Symptoms include headaches, dizziness, aching joints, mental fog, blurred vision, disorientation, memory loss, facial numbness and neck and spinal pain. Liver, heart and kidney damage, neurological disorders, immune system impairment and autoimmune disorders, birth defects and learning disabilities may also occur. Although the condition was cited in medical journals 40 years ago, the scientific community is just beginning to regard it as a legitimate and, for some, devastating disease.

"MCS is an ill-defined melange of symptoms that can involve the nervous system, endocrine system, immune system and even a person's psychological makeup," says Morton Teich, M.D., a New York City specialist who is board certified in pediatrics, allergy and environmental medicine. "It appears that the people who are most susceptible are those who are already vulnerable from any number of factors--prior chemical exposure, genetic weakness, a thyroid problem, a viral infection, even from having taken too many antibiotics."

Of course, the culprits behind MCS aren't just household cleaning products. Many people first became sick after serious pesticide exposure. Others had jobs or lived in areas that caused them to interact routinely with highly toxic industrial chemicals. Regardless of how a person was initially affected, the sensitivity to one chemical can spread, slowly or quickly, to include other chemicals, and then to increasingly lower levels of them until the sufferer is chronically sick. For some, just being in a house where ordinary cleaning products are stored can bring on symptoms. "In people who are hypersensitive, even a small amount of exposure can do damage," says Teich.

The chemicals used in household cleaning products are not, for the most part, so toxic that they turn our houses into miniature Love Canals. They are, however, adding to the total chemical load we breathe, touch and ingest. It may be that MCS sufferers are beacons for everyone else, in essence signaling that there's too much toxicity in our environment. All of us, whether chemically sensitive or not, are believed to be storing whatever toxic substances the body can't eliminate in our fatty tissues. "This," says Teich, "perpetuates the problem in that it creates a state of constant exposure."

Germ Warfare

According to physicist Philip Dickey, Ph.D., director of the Household Toxics Program in Seattle, "The three most dangerous cleaning products in the average home are probably drain cleaners, oven cleaners and toilet bowl cleaners. They are usually labeled 'Danger: Corrosive,' meaning they can severely burn skin or eyes and cause internal burns if swallowed accidentally."