February 20, 2018.
Norwegian scientific study attacks household products hard. According to the findings of its authors, inhaling too many toxic substances greatly increases the risk of developing lung problems, at least as much as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day for years.
Lung problems more common in people who do housework often
What if, to preserve your health, you had to stop cleaning your house? This is what this recent study suggests, conducted by Norwegian researchers who claim that frequently inhaling toxic substances found in household products would be as harmful as heavy tobacco consumption.
To reach this conclusion, published in the journal Journal of respiratory and critical care medicine, the researchers observed the case of 6,000 people for twenty years. By cross-checking different data, and in particular their gender, their profession and their health status, the authors of this study showed that people who were in regular contact with household products were more likely to develop lung problems.
Housekeepers are particularly concerned
They have even managed to measure this risk in relation to tobacco consumption, and claim that breathing in household product vapors often can be as dangerous as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day for twenty years.
The study also reveals that not all participants are equal when it comes to this risk. Women are more concerned and, among them, the profession plays a key role. Thus, 13.7% of the cleaning women represented in this sample of the population were concerned by pulmonary problems against 9.6% of the women who did not use any household product.
Gaelle Latour
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