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Indoor Contaminants
Going Green
Going Green: Indoor Contaminants
How many times have you heard, wipe your feet before you come in the house? Well it turns out that is not only good advice to keep your house clean, it turns out to be good for your health. And Dr. David Johnson explains why.
"Contaminants in outdoor soils are brought indoors where kids spend more time and some fraction of household dust is ingested so they're exposed to whatever the soil contaminants contain," Dr. Johnson said.
How much outside soil can be found in household dust? Recent research pegs that number at 30 to 60 percent. And how much soil is coming indoors?
"Between 200 milligrams, that's .2 of a gram, and 2 grams per day, per occupant is roughly the amount of material that's brought into the house on shoes. I don't know about pets. That could be even worse," said Dr. Johnson.
And Dr. Johnson's big concern is the soil in northeastern urban neighborhoods where there's a concentration of older homes that used lead-based paints and we see much higher levels of lead in children.
"And when you look at things in the southwest, for instance, where less wood was used in the construction, more brick and adobe, there's less external paint and it turns out there's less lead in the soil," Dr. Johnson said.
So lead-based paint peels off older homes, mixes in the neighborhood soil and then, unless you remove your shoes, you track it in the house where cleaning doesn't necessarily help.
"Many contaminants are concentrated in the smallest sized fraction of the soil particle so when you employ a cleaning machine, particularly sweeping and vacuuming, it's the big particles that get removed most easily,” Dr. Johnson added. “The small particles, many of them remain behind so the concentrations build up."
Dr. Johnson says wet mopping is better.
So, it really does turn out that one of the best ways to improve your indoor environment is to keep this stuff out.
