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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday February 20 2020, @08:48AM   Printer-friendly
from the who-would-have-guessed dept.

Exposure to cleaning products in first 3 months of life can increase risk of childhood asthma:

New research from the CHILD Cohort Study[*] shows that frequent exposure to common household cleaning products can increase a child's risk of developing asthma.

Asthma is the most common chronic childhood disease and is the primary reason why children miss school or end up in hospital.

The study was published today in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. It found that young infants (birth to three months) living in homes where household cleaning products were used frequently were more likely to develop childhood wheeze and asthma by three years of age.

"Most of the available evidence linking asthma to the use of cleaning products comes from research in adults," said the study's lead researcher, Dr. Tim Takaro, a professor and clinician- scientist in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University (SFU). "Our study looked at infants, who typically spend 80-90% of their time indoors and are especially vulnerable to chemical exposures through the lungs and skin due to their higher respiration rates and regular contact with household surfaces."

[...] "Interestingly, we did not find an association between the use of cleaning products and a risk of atopy alone," noted Dr. Takaro. "Therefore, a proposed mechanism underlying these findings is that chemicals in cleaning products damage the cells that line the respiratory tract through innate inflammatory pathways rather than acquired allergic pathways."

"We also found that at age three, the relationship between product exposure and respiratory problems was much stronger in girls than boys," he added. "This is an interesting finding that requires more research to better understand male versus female biological responses to inflammatory exposures in early life."

The study used data from 2,022 children participating in the CHILD Cohort Study and examined their daily, weekly and monthly exposure to 26 types of household cleaners, including dishwashing and laundry detergents, cleaners, disinfectants, polishes, and air fresheners.

"The risks of recurrent wheeze and asthma were notably higher in homes with frequent use of certain products, such as liquid or solid air fresheners, plug-in deodorizers, dusting sprays, antimicrobial hand sanitizers and oven cleaners," commented the paper's lead author, Jaclyn Parks, a graduate student in the Faculty of Health Sciences at SFU. "It may be important for people to consider removing scented spray cleaning products from their cleaning routine. We believe that the smell of a healthy home is no smell at all."

[*] CHILD Cohort Study web site.

Journal References:

  • Elissa M. Abrams. "Cleaning products and asthma risk: a potentially important public health concern", CMAJ (DOI: 10.1503/cmaj.200025)
  • Jaclyn Parks, Lawrence McCandless, Christoffer Dharma, Jeffrey Brook, Stuart E. Turvey, Piush Mandhane, Allan B. Becker, Anita L. Kozyrskyj, Meghan B. Azad, Theo J. Moraes, Diana L. Lefebvre, Malcolm R. Sears, Padmaja Subbarao, James Scott and Tim K. Takaro. "Association of use of cleaning products with respiratory health in a Canadian birth cohort", CMAJ (DOI: 10.1503/cmaj.190819)

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 20 2020, @02:20PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 20 2020, @02:20PM (#960280)

    The main cause of asthma is breathing irritating fumes or particulate matter, not cleanliness.

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  • (Score: 2) by Booga1 on Thursday February 20 2020, @04:22PM

    by Booga1 (6333) on Thursday February 20 2020, @04:22PM (#960330)

    Not off topic, but not quite right either. This article is talking about "a child's risk of developing asthma" not about fumes triggering an asthma attack.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by ledow on Friday February 21 2020, @09:33AM

    by ledow (5567) on Friday February 21 2020, @09:33AM (#960643) Homepage

    It's not the cleanliness that affects you.

    It's the germ-killing chemical that you're spraying in the air around a small child, soaking every surface in, and wiping their hands/face with when they dribble a bit. It's quite literally household chemical pollution, with a chemical specifically designed to kill living organisms. You're only not affected because of the dosage needed to kill you as someone of adult weight. Children are much more affected.

    Seriously... stop spraying that stuff everywhere, every two seconds, for some perceived germ-risk. They are far more at risk from you spraying literal synthetic biocides in their local area every day than they are from a big of sticky food that they decide to lick off the counter.

    I can tell you now - cleanliness literally kills kids at the extreme. I've been in people's houses where the smell of bleach pervaded every surface, even the kid's soft toys, and every single dot of food was immediately wiped up with biocidal-chemical-soaked wet-wipes (even from their hands/face). To the extent that I know at least one person who - after they had cleaned the house - you couldn't enter for nearly 30 minutes because the bleach *burned* the inside of your nose. And they thought they were doing themselves a favour. Fortunately, they didn't have kids.

    There's being clean, and then there's being clean. A wipe with a damn cloth will clean the stain off the counter but will actually put more germs down than were there originally. And that's *fine*. Living in a germ-free environment is unhealthy to your immune system. Living in an environment swimming with biocides is positively damaging to your lungs and other parts of your body.