Nontoxic Furnishings
Your brand-new living room set looks great—but did you know it may be polluting the air in your home? Just like cleaning products, new furniture can give off VOCs (VOCs and You), thanks to off-gassing, which means giving off the chemicals used to make the product. For example, your new sofa's cushions and the chemicals that make them stain- and fire-resistant all emit VOCs. So do the glues used to make furniture, including the glue that holds particleboard together. So while you're sitting in your living room watching the tube, you may be breathing in formaldehyde, benzene, dioxins, and other VOCs. (They say watching TV is bad for you, but it doesn't have to be that hazardous.)
You may also want to think about how your furniture was made and what impact that had on the environment. Take that new sofa, for example. The foam in its cushions is made of polyurethane, a petroleum-based material that isn't exactly earth-friendly. To make just one pound of polyurethane foam requires nearly a pound of crude oil, half a pound of coal, and 400 gallons of water—and spits 4.5 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Also, unless the cotton used to make the couch's fabric was organic, the cotton was sprayed with pesticides. In addition, up to half of the dyes and other chemicals used to treat the fabric got washed back into the environment as waste. And where did the wood for the sofa's frame come from—a well-managed, sustainable forest or an at-risk one?
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