Change the Air!

October 19, 2015 4:08 PM

I am curious to hear from mefites if you could recommend science based articles about diseases associated with indoor air and household products particularly in relation to make occupational hazard based advocacy against routine use of known toxins around children and forced on workers.

I am doing my own research to find quality articles about this (and there are a lot in pubmed) but I know plenty of mefites have science backgrounds and you might know of good sources for this. I am hoping to make a case for both schools in my area and childcare facilities that this is a child health issue that should be looked into more than not at all.

Common practices like using air fresheners in day cares may be associated with children's allergies and asthma in addition to some of these products containing known carcinogens and toxins in amounts that are not known to be safe; in addition to multiple other sources of indoor air pollution in building materials and cleaning products.

I feel like it's bizarre that our culture vilifies smoking and smokers to the degree it's criminal to smoke near children in some areas (which I agree it shouldn't be done by the way) but any considering of spraying carcinogens in the air for air freshening purposes around our children as laughed at tree hugging hippy ideas. I want to put together what research there is and present a case that we should be measuring toxins in indoor air and addressing sources of toxic air in our schools and childcare facilities.

The other question I have is what sorts of regulatory agencies are supposed to already be looking into this, or are there any? (That's the sad thing, there aren't any are there, that are actively investigating current research on this and applying it to health of children in public schools or workers in the workplace?).

posted by xarnop to Health & Fitness (3 answers total)

So, this is hard because "known toxins" can be kind of a mushy term. Most of our dose-response data for these sorts of compounds comes from animal studies, where you can give mice huge quantities of the chemical in question to see how they react. We end up having to extrapolate on the lower end of the scale to guess at what the response might be at low doses (i.e. what people are usually exposed to in the real world).

To add to that, there are some classes of chemicals where we know the effects are additive -- e.g. endocrine disruptors (like BPA) are known to have deleterious effects at low doses. The symptoms are often things like obesity though, where it's hard to say "yes, this exposure causes children to gain X pounds" -- often because exposure to BPA might be correlated with other risk factors for obesity, or maybe BPA interacts with other things Y and Z to cause children to gain weight. And because these sorts of compounds are in damn near everything, it's very difficult to quantify just how much the average child (or adult) is exposed to.

Compare that to something like lead, for example, where we know pretty much exactly how much exposure causes exactly what terrible things in kids (...and yet, it's still a problem in many places of the world, including the US).

That said, here are some papers you might be interested in:

PCB remediation in schools

Cleaning practices and cleaning products in nurseries and schools: to what extent can they impact indoor air quality?

Cleaning products and short-term respiratory effects among female cleaners with asthma

And of course, you might want to look at lead studies.

Generally speaking, some combination of OSHA, NIOSH, and EPA would be responsible for regulation, but...you know, they're government agencies with limited budgets. Here's an OSHA/NIOSH fact sheet about cleaning products, including links to more information at the end.
posted by Ragini at 5:09 PM on October 19, 2015 [2 favorites]

Just my initial thought for one regulatory place to look into--each state has different daycare guidelines outlining how to sanitize toys and what materials are safe for children to have present. For example, when I worked in WV at a play area at a gym for college parents with children, we used the WV daycare regulations, which were available online at the time. It was specific enough to state how long yarn could be, so that it was not a strangulation hazard, and outlined how often toys had to be sanitized and the water to bleach ratio for cleaning.

Going state-by-state might be a way to get someplace, if you were able to get publicity. For example, many schools in my area in central VA are not allowing any candy treats or foods in activities without sending a parent permission note home for each child to let them know exactly what foods the lesson/treat contains. This is following the death of a child in the area who had a peanut allergy, accidentally ingested something containing peanuts at school, and was not able to be treated quickly enough. (I of course hope that nothing bad has to happen to anyone, but if something comes up in the news, you might be able to get some support behind you.)

(I am not a scientist.)
posted by shortyJBot at 5:10 PM on October 19, 2015 [2 favorites]

"Children who are exposed to insecticides indoors are nearly 50 percent more likely to develop leukemia or lymphoma, according to a new study that linked exposure to the disease." National Cancer Institute Sept. 2015

The study is published in the Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
posted by cda at 7:03 PM on October 19, 2015 [1 favorite]