Hello everyone! Today, I will be sharing some insights on air pollution from daily household products and its relation to indoor pollution.
A study show that in urban areas, chemicals contained in consumer goods such as personal care products, indoor cleaners, paints and pesticides now contribute as much to ozone and fine particulate matter as do emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels (McDonald et al., 2018). Often these consumer goods contain “volatile organic compounds” VOCs that easily vaporise and enter into the atmosphere. The VOCs will react with other pollutants to produce either ozone or particulate matter (McDonald et al., 2018). The study found that, household chemicals now contribute fully one-half of emitted VOCs.
An image showing common household products as sources of indoor pollution.
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/535154368216298389/
Household VOCs indoors could pose a health hazard as these chemicals can react with other air pollutants in the air such nitrogen oxides. Thus, contributing to outdoor air pollution. While the study points out that there is an improvement in the contribution in emissions from transport-related services, we now can see a rise in observed urban and indoor air pollution from VOCs emissions. This general trend in the United States occurred as a result of government regulations which led to the reduction in carbonaceous aerosols of fossil origin.
Although, we can see that fossil fuels remain as the primary source for urban air pollution, exposure to ambient PM2.5 is increasingly from chemical products as the transportation sector becomes cleaner (McDonald et al., 2018). The list of household products that produce VOCs which includes a wide variety of items includes, soaps, shampoos, lotions, house paints, degreasers and many more (Meyer, 2018).
To conclude, the contribution of household products to air pollution is a constantly increasing as the products are widely used across the world. It is difficult for regulators since many of these sources, including cleaning and personal care products are often not controlled.
Thank you for reading!
For the upcoming blog post, I will be doing some research and share more understanding of how air pollution is damging our hair!
References:
McDonald, B., Gouw, J., Gilman, J., Jathar, S., Akherati, A., Cappa, C., . . . Trainer, M. (2018, February 16). Volatile chemical products emerging as largest petrochemical source of urban organic emissions. Retrieved September 20, 2020, from https://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6377/760