make a clean sweep - home cleaning and respiratory ailments

Vegetarian Times, Sept, 2000 by Victoria Moran

How can we tell if our favorite cleaning products are toxic? It's easy: Read the labels. Many products come right out and say that they're dangerous or poisonous. Yet we continue to use them. And even when used properly--on their own, in a well-ventilated area and kept out of reach of children--many common cleaning agents are triggers for chemical reactions, says Carl Grimes, author of Starting Points for a Healthy Habitat (GMC Media, 1999). Ammonia and chlorine are respiratory irritants, so people with heart or lung damage should avoid both. Petroleum-based cleaners (found in the vast majority of commercial spot removers) can cause respiratory problems, headaches and muscle aches in individuals with allergies or chemical sensitivities.

Surprisingly, even armed with all this information, people are still reluctant to change their cleaning habits. We are a nation obsessed with fighting dirt, annihilating grime, busting grease and, above all, killing germs. But do we want that at the cost of our health? This is not to say we shouldn't--or can't--have clean homes. We just need to have a simpler approach. This means focusing on dissolving, dispersing and wiping away what shouldn't be on a surface: dirt, dust, spills and germs. The process is largely a matter of wetting and wiping. Cleaning products are helpers, and those formulated to have less impact on human health and the earth's ecology work every bit as well as the mass marketed (and highly toxic) ones.

Back to Basics

Keeping a house clean is easier than getting one clean. Most household dirt is tracked in on people's shoes. This can include some pretty unsavory stuff, like pesticides, contaminants from car exhaust and lead-based paint in the soil. Household dust also consists of skin flakes and insect parts, allergens like pollen, animal dander and microscopic dust mites, plus gritty particles of rock, sand and topsoil that can irritate your respiratory system.

An easy way to eliminate much of the dirt is to instill a no-shoes-indoors policy. Simply having family members go barefoot or slipper-shod inside can make a major difference. So can the installation of sizable mats at every door. Place them vertically instead of horizontally so that even people who don't wipe their feet will have to at least take several steps on the mats before entering.

If you have a forced-air furnace, with either gas or oil heat, you're probably getting dust through your vents, regardless of whether the furnace is brand-new or 20 years old. A good electrostatic filter purchased from your furnace company is long-lasting and does a good job at containing the dust. A portable air cleaner, such as the Austin Air, can absorb and filter airborne dust before it settles on surfaces. It's also a good idea to throw out old newspapers and magazines and limit your collection of trinkets and oddments, so there will be fewer nooks and crannies for dust to accumulate on.

Tool Time

When you're ready to clean, take a few tips from the professionals, who can zip through an entire house in three hours. These people are trained to stack and clean, and they don't stop to reorganize or reminisce. Always clean from the top down (floors last), since dust settles on the bottom level, and completely finish one room before moving on to the next.