Household spray cleaners bad for the health

Oct 15 2007

A new study has found that some sprays which are used to clean the home are bad for the health and may cause asthma in some people.

An international longitudinal study has revealed a link between common household cleaning sprays to an increased risk of asthma in adults.

According to the lead author of the study Dr. Jan-Paul Zock, an epidemiologist at the Centre for Research in Environmental Epidemiology in Barcelona, the frequent use of household cleaning sprays may be an important risk factor for adult asthma.

Cleaning sprays and air fresheners contain chemicals such as ammonia, chlorine-releasing agents and sodium hydroxide.

Although several studies have produced evidence of adverse respiratory health effects related to professional cleaning exposures, the potential risks of nonprofessional uses in private homes have not been evaluated.

Asthma affects as many as 300 million people world wide; the condition causes an inflammation of the airways which results in wheezing, shortness of breath, coughing and chest tightness.

For the study the researchers from Spain, Britain, the Netherlands, Canada, Italy, Sweden, Germany and Greece studied 3,503 people aged 20 to 44 in ten European countries and tracked them for a 9-year period in order to determine if they developed asthma and whether cleaning sprays were a factor.

The results of the study led the scientists to conclude that as many as one in seven cases of asthma being diagnosed was related to the cleaning frequency exhibited by participants; the most dangerous types of spray cleaners were air fresheners, furniture cleaners and glass-cleaners; cleaning products not applied in spray form were not associated with asthma.

The researchers say just spraying a cleaner once a week can trigger an attack and the risk increased the more that the sprays were used.

The study which is published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, used data from the European Community Respiratory Health Survey, one of the largest epidemiologic studies of airway disease in the world.