How Household Items May Be Killing You. Furniture, Cosmetics Generate 45 Toxic Chemicals

People buy the nicest homes they can afford. They spend years – sometimes decades – porting money into nest-feathering by stocking up on creature comforts. It’s no wonder we spend 90% of our lives indoors. Furniture, Shower curtains, Electronic items from TVs to computers to games, Carpeting, cosmetics, and even air-fresheners and soap, It’s all there to make life easier. And yet, many of those pleasant symbols carry a hidden price: they may be slowly killing you. Nobody ever said plastics and industrial chemicals were good for healthy living. It turns out some are really quite hazardous, according to a comprehensive review in Environmental Science and Technology by three universities and two environmental groups.

They reviewed the science and identified 45 substances – phthalates, phenols, flame retardants, fragrances, and fluorinated chemicals – that most commonly leach out of products and become a part of household air and dust. Those toxins, when floating inside your home or apartment, are linked to endocrinal, reproductive, developmental, neurological and immunological hazards, and probably cancer. Once in dust form, they can enter your body. We know these chemicals even at low levels can have negative health effects. Children and pregnant women are often the most sensitive. Children can have many times more of chemical in their bodies than their mothers do, according to research.

TCEP, also known as Tris(2-chloroethyl)phosphate, a flame-retardant common to furniture, including kids’ mattresses. These chemicals don’t bind to foam, leaving them free to get all over children’s hands, which inevitably end up in their mouths. Some areas have begun to ban TCEP. The team reviewed relatively new research, published since 2000, to ensure they were identifying chemicals I current use. Consumers can’t shop their way around chemical exposures. A 2014 study found that the crud left on hand-wipes after use carried levels of flame-retardant that matched dust levels in each household. So kids, wash your hands. And preferably d it with non-antibiotic soap devoid of fragrance, which may contain chemicals that are a part of the problem.