By Katherine McMahon
Chemical cleaning products have grown in popularity due to their ability to clean anything quickly, but along with their many positives comes many negatives. Chemical cleaning products, as the name states, include chemicals, many of which are not safe to inhale regularly. Many individuals have begun to move away from natural soap and water cleaning for the simple convenience that chemical cleaning products bring forth. As the world continues to shift to chemical cleaning products, researchers have become interested to study how smelling these chemicals weekly, or even daily, can affect respiratory function in the long run.
According to a new study performed by European researchers, women who regularly use chemical cleaning products may suffer from the same lung damage as individuals who smoke a pack of cigarettes a day for ten to twenty years. These researchers found that even women who use chemical cleaning products as little as once a week show decreased respiratory function of the lungs. Instead of focusing on the chemicals itself, the study focused on lung function and how well air moved in and out of the lungs by the individuals who used chemical cleaning products once a week, and by individuals who worked with chemical cleaners on a regular basis. The researchers noted that they chose to focus on the results of the women included in the study since the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics supports the notion that women are the ones who usually do the majority of housework. Women also represent the majority of the domestic workforce.
The Study
For two decades, researchers at the European Community Respiratory Health Survey (ECRHS) evaluated participants at three points in time to measure lung function. Throughout the course of the study they distributed questionnaires to determine the participant’s cleaning activities. The questionnaire asked how frequently each participant used chemical cleaning products weekly.
The study included 6,235 participants at health centers in nine countries around western Europe. On average the participants were in their mid-thirties when the study began, and about half were female. Researchers used two measurements to determine lung function. The first measurement was forced expiratory volume per second, which measures the amount of air a person can forcibly exhale in a second. The second measurement was forced vital capacity, which measures the total amount a person can exhale in a second.
Although respiratory function generally declines with age in both men and women, the women who use chemical cleaning products in general showed higher diagnosis rates of asthma than men who reported not using chemical cleaning products. Overall the study found that women who regularly used cleaning products, in their home or in the course of their employment, showed accelerated lung function decline.
Looking Forward
Though the results of the study appear alarming, federal regulation of cleaning products is poor, so it is up to consumers to choose their cleaning products wisely. Consumers need to ensure they do proper research about the effects that each chemical cleaner may have on their respiratory health. The Environment Working Group (EWG) has created a guide to healthy cleaning where consumers can search different types of cleaning products and see how much concern there is for different factors including respiratory function, skin irritation, reproductive toxicity, cancer, and environment. Overall, this study should serve as a warning to all that we need to be more cognizant about how outside factors can affect our physical health.
Katherine McMahon is a 2L staff member on the Journal of Health and Biomedical Law. Katherine interned with the Chief Justice in the Probate and Family Court Administrative Office, and now is a Law Clerk at Keches Law Group, P.C. She is interested in medical malpractice, biomedical law, and property law. As a staff member she is working on a Spring 2019 case comment about a medical record company who is accused of charging excess fees in violation of HIPAA and DHHS.
Resources:
https://www.thoracic.org/about/newsroom/press-releases/resources/women-cleaners-lung-function.pdf