How Does Cleaning Products Cause Air Pollution

A range of household products including cleaning agents, paints, perfumes, hairsprays and soaps emit volatile compounds that contribute significantly to air pollution. These compounds react with molecules in air forming particulate thing and ozone, both of which are harmful to human health. Paul Bradbury/Caiaimage/Getty Images hibernate caption

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Paul Bradbury/Caiaimage/Getty Images

A range of household products including cleaning agents, paints, perfumes, hairsprays and soaps emit volatile compounds that contribute significantly to air pollution. These compounds react with molecules in air forming particulate matter and ozone, both of which are harmful to human health.

Paul Bradbury/Caiaimage/Getty Images

Scientists measuring levels of air pollutants in the Los Angeles basin have constitute that everyday household products, like soaps, paints and perfumes are causing nearly every bit much air pollution every bit cars and industries combined.

Most air pollutants come up from the extraction, refining and use of fossil fuels. These pollutants include hundreds of different compounds that scientists clump into what they call Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs). "In one case they're emitted into the atmosphere, they tin lead to the formation of basis level ozone and particles, both of which are detrimental to homo health," says Jessica Gilman, an atmospheric pharmacist at the U.Due south. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and an author of the new study.

Nigh 95% of fossil fuels stop up in automobiles, and so, law makers in the U.Due south. and around the globe take regulated industries and cars to try and bring down those emissions. Those efforts have largely paid off.

"A new automobile's near a 100 times cleaner than an older car," says Brian McDonald, an atmospheric scientist at NOAA and the lead author on the new study. As a result, emissions from cars and trucks have plummeted across the country. "We tin also see that in air quality measurements over a v decade period in the Los Angeles basin."

However, in recent years household products have go a bigger source of air pollution, the team reports in today's issue of the periodical, Scientific discipline.

The scientists began looking into this back in 2022, when the California Air Resources Board, NOAA and the California Energy Commission began extensive monitoring and measurement of air pollutants. That's when the scientists noticed that many air pollutants in the Los Angeles expanse were at levels much higher than what they would run across if those pollutants came just from tailpipes.

Have for case, ethanol, which makes up 10 percent of gasoline consumed. "We expected a pregnant amount of ethanol to be in the air that comes from just the apply of gasoline from cars," says McDonald. But levels of ethanol were five times higher than what's emitted by tailpipes, he says. "That tipped usa off to wait at where are other sources of ethanol and what could they be in, and information technology turns out that ethanol is pretty common in personal care products and cleaning products."

They made like observations for isopropanol, or rubbing booze, and acetone, the primary ingredient in smash polish remover, and a whole range of other chemicals in everyday products like soaps, wall paint, printer ink, perfumes and pesticides. "The origin of a lot of consumer and chemical products is originally from oil and natural gas," says McDonald. About five percent of oil and natural gas is used every bit feed stock for these commodities.

To get a handle on all of the consumer products that could be emitting VOCs into the atmosphere, he created an inventory of all of the different chemical products manufactured and sold in the U.S. And so, he and his colleagues looked into what chemicals were in each of those products, and which of those chemicals would emit VOCs and how much. "That gives us a fingerprint on the emissions sources," says McDonald.

When he and his colleagues put together the emissions from all of the unlike products used in the U.Due south. it amounted to near one-half of all VOC emissions in Los Angeles.

The findings are important and surprising, says Albert Presto, an atmospheric scientist at Carnegie Mellon University. "Nosotros're all conditioned to retrieve about traffic and industry as the large drivers for air pollution and pollutants. And this study says, 'wait a minute, a lot of it is really stuff we're using inside our homes.'"

These household sources take emerged as big polluters considering cars accept become cleaner, says Jonathan Levy, an environmental health skilful at Boston University. "As traffic sources refuse, other sources become more and more of import over time."

Air pollution remains 1 of the tiptop causes for the burden of disease worldwide. "Ozone can do things like worsen asthma, trigger asthma attacks," says Janice Nolen, the assistant vice president of national policy at the American Lung Association. "It tin also impale people, it can shorten lives." Exposure to particulate matter has similar deleterious health effects.

So, the new written report has implications for further reducing air pollution, says Presto, especially for cities that are struggling with coming together air pollution standards, like Los Angeles, which has one of the highest levels of ozone in the country. "You can only make cars so clean," he says. "Maybe the mode to get ozone below federal limits is to reduce emissions from indoors."

The state of California is already on the task, says Nolen. The California Air Resource Board already regulates some consumer products like deodorants and pilus sprays for VOC emissions. The regulations take pushed companies to make these products "cleaner, less emitting," she says.

The new written report suggest we need "some national measures to aid reduce emissions" from these everyday sources, says Nolen.

Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/02/15/585886321/your-wall-paint-perfumes-and-cleaning-agents-are-polluting-our-air

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