Assessing Environmental Exposures

Indoor Air Quality - Cleaning with Essential Oils

The average person spends 90% of their time indoors. So the quality of the air inside your home is extremely important to your overall health.
However, most homes have very poor air quality which is alarming considering the amount of time spent indoors.
The EPA has listed indoor air quality as one of the top 5 environmental risks to our health.
Many factors contribute to the quality of air inside our homes many coming from the home itself. Many building supplies leach chemicals that contribute to poor air quality including carpeting, paint, pressed wood products, glues, resigns, fabrics etc. Other main sources include personal care products and cleaning products. Environmental Working Group’s investigation of more than 2,000 cleaning supplies on the American market has found that many contain substances linked to serious health problems such as asthma, cancer, reproductive and developmental toxicity, allergies and irritation and accidents such as burns and poisonings.

While we can’t always control all the building materials used in our homes we can control the products we use inside.
Small changes to our cleaning products could have huge impacts on the quality of air inside our homes and help reduce exposure to toxic chemicals that may be present in many commercial cleaners.

In this video, I discuss how to look at environmental exposures to assess where to start making positive changes in our home environment.