Living Green: The Missing Manual

Chapter 1. Home Green Home: Creating a Safe, Earth-Friendly Place to Live

Living green is all about reducing pollution and creating a safe, healthy environment for you and your family, not to mention all the other critters on the planet. There's no better place to start your quest for greenification than at home—after all, that's where you have the most control.

Turns out there could be some pretty scary pollution right in your own house:

• The air in your home is probably more polluted than the air in the industrial part of a big city.

• Many common cleaning products contain toxic substances.

• The average American home contains 63 synthetic chemicals, which add up to about 10 gallons of hazardous stuff.

Yikes! Almost makes you want to up and move to a log cabin in the woods.

Luckily, you don't need all those nasty chemicals in your home. And, as you'll learn in this chapter, getting rid of them doesn't mean giving mildew free rein over your bathroom. Nope, you can easily and cheaply replace potentially harmful cleaning products with simple, natural alternatives. Same goes for your lawn: You can keep it healthy without feeding it synthetic fertilizers; the last section of this chapter teaches you how.

Before you can banish harsh chemicals in your home, it's important to learn about them and the problems they can cause so you can dispose of 'em properly. So this chapter starts with a rundown of common chemicals and the health problems they can cause. But don't lose hope: Keep reading to learn how to keep your family healthy without hurting the earth.

The Chemicals You Live With

Your home is your castle, your sanctuary, the place where you raise your family and relax at the end of the day. But rather than being a safe haven, many homes are a minefield of chemicals that can affect your health and harm the planet. In fact, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has called the typical American home "the number one violator of chemical waste per capita" because many of those chemicals get tossed in the trash or go swirling down the drain. Let's take a tour of a typical home to see what chemical hazards may be lurking within its walls:

• Throughout the house. Paint, carpet, draperies, upholstery, and furniture may contain volatile organic compounds, or VOCs. The box on VOCs and You explains what VOCs are and why you should avoid them.

• Kitchen. Cleaners are the culprits here. Oven cleaners and drain uncloggers are loaded with lye. Dishwasher detergents may contain lots of chlorine—the leading cause of childhood poisoning—and phosphates, which pollute rivers and lakes. And many antibacterial cleaners contain a potentially harmful chemical called triclosan.

  Note

  The next section includes a table that tells you exactly how the chemicals mentioned here can affect you—see How Household Chemicals Can Affect Your Health.

• Bathroom. Here you'll find toilet-bowl cleaners (which get rid of gunk with corrosive ingredients like hydrochloric acid and oxalic acid), lye-filled drain uncloggers, and tub and tile sprays that go after mold and mildew while releasing sodium hypochlorite and formaldehyde into the air. And air freshener sprays may contain formaldehyde or phenol, neither of which you want to breathe in.

  Note

  When you open the cabinet under your kitchen or bathroom sink, a characteristic smell wafts out. You may associate this smell with a clean house—but it comes from chemicals you don't want to inhale. VOCs (VOCs and You) can escape even from closed containers, making the air under the sink some of the most polluted in the house. That's a good reason to use the green cleaning products discussed later in this chapter.

• Laundry room. The chlorine bleach you use to get your whites white is strongly corrosive, so you don't want it anywhere near your eyes, skin, mouth, or nose. Detergents and fabric softeners may contain chemicals and fragrances that can irritate skin or, worse, get absorbed through the skin and harm your health—not what you want on your family's clothes, towels, and bedding. And dryer sheets may contain chloroform or pentane.

• Living and dining rooms. The furniture polish or wax you use to clean your wood furniture may contain phenol or benzene. Upholstery and carpet shampoos are likely to have perchloroethylene or ammonium hydroxide in them.

• Bedrooms and closets.Bedrooms are often heavy on fabrics and upholstery: bedding, drapes, carpeting, and so on. These materials, especially when new, can emit VOCs (VOCs and You). And more VOCs are waiting in your closet. Dry-cleaned clothing, for example, may give off benzene or contain perchloroethylene. Permanent-press clothing may be full of formaldehyde, and the fibers in fleece easily absorb VOCs from the air—and then re-emit them. Dust mites and pet dander can also cling to your clothes and cause breathing problems. Most closets aren't very well ventilated, so your walk-in closet may have some of the most polluted air in your home.

• Home office.Love the smell of fresh markers? Hold your breath! Markers, including felt-tip pens, permanent markers, and dry-erase markers, contain solvents that help the ink dry fast. Those solvents get into the air and into your lungs. Copiers and some printers release ozone, VOCs (including formaldehyde), and particulates (teensy particles that come from materials like paper, ink, and toner). To breathe easier, make sure your office is well ventilated, and get an ozone-filtered laser printer.

  Tip

  Markers labeled "low VOC" or "low odor" don't release as many fumes. When you use a marker, put its cap back on when you're finished with it. Better still, use colored pencils or crayons to avoid fumes altogether.

• Basement and garage.If you have old paint cans sitting around, you're storing a source of VOCs that the EPA calls one of the top five environmental hazards. You don't want the ingredients in paint anywhere near your family: benzene, toluene, xylene, formaldehyde, even lead if the paint was made before 1970. That's why some states, like California, define certain kinds of leftover paint as toxic waste and have special rules for disposing of it (see Clearing Out Clutter). If you wear contacts, the lenses can absorb these VOCs and trap them against your eyes, where they can cause irritation and get absorbed into your body. Other stuff you may store in your basement or garage—like paint strippers, varnish, lacquer, pesticides, glues, and sealants—also give off VOCs. Car soaps, waxes, and products that help you remove tar and bugs from your car contain petroleum distillates that can irritate your skin and respiratory system.

Note

Fortunately, you can buy low-VOC paints. Paint tells you all about them.

That's a scary list! The next section goes into more detail about health problems associated with these chemicals. But don't lose hope: Starting on Clean and Green: Environmentally Friendly Cleaning, you'll learn that you don't need all those nasty things in your house. There are all kinds of easy ways to avoid harmful chemicals while keeping your house clean and healthy.

Frequently Asked Question: VOCs and You

What are VOCs and how can they affect me?

VOC stands for volatile organic compound, a type of chemical. Unless you're a chemist, that's not very illuminating, so let's break it down:

• Volatile means the chemical evaporates easily at room temperature. That's why when you use a spray cleaner on the kitchen counter, for example, you smell the fumes. VOCs' volatility is the reason they're behind so much indoor air pollution.

• Organic compound. Wait a minute—organic is good, right? Not always. It's good when it describes how fruits and vegetables are grown (page xx6), but in chemistry, an organic compound is a chemical that has carbon in its makeup. Some organic compounds, like carbohydrates and vitamins, are beneficial. But others, especially synthetic chemicals, can be harmful. Many organic compounds are irritants that can affect your eyes, skin, and breathing. Others, like formaldehyde and benzene, can cause cancer. When such organic compounds are volatile—that is, when they get into the air—you obviously want to avoid inhaling them.