Is Household Air Pollution Harming Your Health? What to Know & How to Improve Indoor Air Quality

plants are a powerful way to improve indoor air quality

When it comes to our health, we hear a lot about what we eat and how to move, but there’s one big area that tends to get ignored: household air pollution. People spend 80 to 90 percent of their time inside, and indoor environments can be two to five times more polluted than outdoor environments, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Read on to learn more about the sources of household air pollution (including gas stove health risks), what this pollution means for your health, how to improve indoor air quality, and more.

The Dangers of Indoor and Household Air Pollution

Back in 2018, WelBe hosted a panel of experts who spoke about the link between indoor air pollution and chronic disease, and what you can do to protect yourself (watch the recording of the discussion below!). The panelists were Dr. Taz Bhatia, an integrative and functional medicine doctor; Sacha Dunn, founder and CEO of natural cleaning products company Common Good; Nneka Leiba, the Environmental Working Group’s director of Healthy Living Science; and Christopher Satch, head of plant science and education at plant company The Sill, and their discussion shed some much-needed light on the topic of indoor air pollution and your health. In the years since then, the topics they covered and issues they raised have only become more pressing.

 

 

Indoor and household air pollution is a leading cause of illness. Research has linked it to heart disease, asthma, allergies, stroke, lung disease, cancer, and dementia, among other issues, and anecdotally, there are more troubling associations. Dr. Taz, for instance, says that in her practice, she sees lab results come back showing toxins at the root of many health issues; that’s where the line gets murky between what studies are showing versus what’s actually happening in clinical practice. “There are some things we know for sure, and there are some things we are super suspicious of,” she said, adding that she also sees toxicity play a role in mental health issues such as anxiety, depression, bipolar, and schizophrenia.  

In early 2023, the journal Nature released a commentary declaring that indoor air pollution was a serious public health issue that needs addressing immediately. This sort of bold statement was important, as household air pollution tends to be ignored, while public conversation, resources, and policy focus on outdoor air pollutants, like emissions from cars or manufacturing. Indeed, there are stringent regulations governing the air quality outside, but indoor spaces—including both private homes and public spaces like schools, workplaces, stores, and hospitals—aren’t usually subject to legally enforceable air quality standards. 

However, the numbers show that indoor air pollution is just as dangerous as its outdoor counterpart: according to the World Health Organization, 3.2 million people died from causes related to indoor air pollution in 2020, compared to 3.5 million who died from causes related to outdoor air pollution. 

The types and causes of household air pollution are different from those found outside. Sources of indoor air pollution include combustion appliances like gas stoves (read on for more on gas stove health risks, chemicals used in building supplies and furniture manufacturing, excess moisture that can lead to mold, personal care products like hair spray and dry shampoo, and outdoor air pollutants that make their way into indoor spaces through ventilation systems. All of these pollutants are riskier inside than they are outside, because in an outdoor space, dangerous toxins like carbon monoxide are diluted, whereas they accumulate in a closed-off room. (For the same reason, pathogens like Covid and the flu are more easily spread in indoor environments than outdoor ones.)

What’s more, the effects of household air pollution are cumulative. While you might just have one building material in your home that has a cancer-causing ingredient, if you breathe in that toxin day after day and year after year, the health harms build upon each other. Not only does that compound the negative health effects of that particular toxin, but it also adds to your overall toxic burden, piling on top of outdoor air pollution and anything else your body is fighting off (illness, poor gut health, autoimmune conditions, etc). 

All of this is pretty terrifying — but the good news is that there’s something you can do about it. 

6 Ways to Improve Indoor Air Quality

Based on our research and the expert insights from our panel, here are the six most powerful things you can do to improve indoor air quality and reduce your exposure to household air pollution. 

1. Skip the air freshener

Spraying air freshener releases fine particles that include synthetic fragrances that can hold up to 200 different chemicals, many of which can have hormone-disrupting ingredients, phthalates, and potential carcinogens. “It’s probably the worst of all the household cleaning products that you could bring in your home,” Dunn said at our panel.

Besides synthetic fragrances, other big no-nos for household cleaning products are those with chlorine or ammonia. Going as simple as soap and water is a great way to clean, Dunn said.

Other products to avoid are plastic shower curtains and dryer balls. That “new plastic” smell is the material releasing volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which are chemicals known to have harmful effects including asthma, eye and nose irritation, and cancer. With dryer balls, while they help fluff your clothes and reduce energy use, heating up the plastic releases VOCs. Dunn suggests using felt dryer balls instead.

Check out our guide to non-toxic household cleaning products and air fresheners, or sign up for the Non-Toxic Product Database for thousands of vetted, WellBe-approved products that won’t harm your health. 

2. Fill your home with plants

Besides purchasing cleaning products with minimal ingredients, one effective way to lower the chemicals in your home is by adding in plants. “Plants have been selected over time by nature. If you weren’t able to survive the volcanoes’ explosion or the fallout from the explosion, then you didn’t pass on those genes and the ones that did survive contain the air cleaning genes,” Satch said at our panel.

Plant types each have different ways of improving air quality, including some that ingest VOCs, absorb them, and then rip them apart at a chemical level, detoxifying them so they aren’t harmful.

Any plant will help, but if you want to put your home on a 24/7 cleaning cycle, a snake plant is a good addition because it absorbs the bad stuff at night— most plants work during the day. Add a Calathea or fern to the mix to cover cleaning during the day.

3. Keep tabs on environmental changes and any symptoms you experience

If you’re noticing your health has changed, start thinking about your home and work environments for potential indoor pollutants, Dr. Taz advises. She’s heard patient stories of people who work in a “sick building” where someone in one cubicle had cancer, someone in another had rheumatoid arthritis, and someone in another had Crohn’s disease. When it comes to your home, keep in mind whether the building is new or old, each has its issues. Older homes may struggle with mold, asbestos, poor ventilation, or fluorescent light bulbs, while a lot of newer homes are made with prefabricated wood and paints that release VOCs. Dr. Taz suggests her patients walk through their homes and look at the construction, materials, paint, furniture, and plastic.

Toxic mold can lead to inflammatory disease and chronic fatigue. If you’re feeling like something’s off with your health, buy a mold plate online to easily assess if you’ve got mold colonies. Check out our interview with Dr. Jess Peatross to learn more about testing for mold toxicity in your home.

4. Vote with your dollar

The vast majority of products used in homes are not fully tested for safety. Instead, Leiba said at our panel, we become the guinea pigs, and the products only get tested if people end up sick. “There needs to be a sea shift of public policy so it’s more protective of public health than it is of industry,” she added. Back in 2018, our panelists all agreed that they were seeing a change happen with individual companies using cleaner, less harmful ingredients because of public pressure and fear of losing customers. 

“The government is twiddling its thumbs, but companies are stepping forward and doing it because consumers are demanding it,” Leiba said at the time.

That means, be demanding! Support companies that are taking care of your health and the environment and say no to those using harmful chemicals.

5. Be aware of gas stove health risks, and mitigate them as much as you can

In the past couple years, there’s been a lot more research and awareness raised about the health risks of gas stoves. They’ve long been shown to release dangerous pollutants, including carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, and nitrogen dioxide, but more recent research has tied strong links between gas stoves and increased risks of childhood asthma, as well as elevated levels of benzene, a chemical that’s been associated with a number of health problems, including headaches, impaired immune function, and cancer, among others. In fact, during 2019 alone, almost two million worldwide cases of childhood asthma were linked to nitrogen dioxide pollution (likely from gas stoves), one study found that 12.7% of current childhood asthma cases in the United States can be attributed to gas stove use, and children living in households with gas stoves were 42% more likely to have asthma. On top of that, research shows that gas stoves leak methane even when they’re turned off — so just having a gas stove in your home can be a hazard, even if you’re not a cook. 

Thankfully, in light of this new research, it seems like federal agencies may be taking some (long overdue) steps toward protecting consumers. In January of this year, the Consumer Product Safety Commission declared that it’s actively researching performance tests for measuring emissions and establishing safety standards for gas stoves, while the Department of Energy is in the process of proposing stronger efficiency regulations for new gas stoves. 

In the meantime, if you have a gas stove, there are things you can do to improve indoor air quality and reduce the household air pollution from your stove:

  • First, if you have a range hood — use it. This applies every time you cook, even if you’re just boiling water for tea or frying an egg.
  • Ventilate as much as you can. Open windows, turn on a fan, do whatever you can to bring in fresh air and dilute any of the harmful chemicals being released by the gas stove.
  • Use countertop appliances in place of your stove when you can. That might mean relying on rice cookers, air fryers, toaster ovens, or microwaves, none of which carry the same health risks as gas stoves.
  • Use an air purifier. While air purifiers aren’t a magic bullet for household air pollution, they can help improve indoor air quality.

6. Control what you can and don’t freak out!

If all of the above sounds daunting, just remember to take it one step at a time. “I think the overwhelming part for everybody, and I see it on everyone’s face when I’m talking to them, is ‘Well, I can’t eat this food, I can’t drink this water, I can’t live here, so what am I supposed to do exactly?’ I think you control what you can, you pick a few categories to focus on, and that’s the best you can do,” Dr. Taz said.

From a health standpoint, Dr. Taz suggests prioritizing gut health, because the gut is the number one organ of detoxification. Dunn suggests avoiding plastic wherever we can. “The kids are being taught to reduce, reuse, recycle, but the emphasis is always on recycle and we need to shift the focus to: Let me think, ‘Do I really need this and is there an alternative to the plastic version?’”

One of the easiest things you can do is dust. “A lot of the chemicals that come into our home fall out of the air and end up in our dust. We bring in chemicals,” Leiba said. Her home gets really dusty, quickly, and she noticed that her allergies were much worse inside. After she started vacuuming more frequently, her symptoms improved a lot.

Leiba also suggested getting a water filter. The EWG found more than 250 chemicals in drinking water— we created our water filter guide based on their report — and most of those can be reduced by a simple water filter.

Then, when it comes time for a bigger purchase, like furniture, look for options that don’t have flame retardants, as those have been linked to endocrine disruption and cancer.

If you’re doing a home renovation, check out the Green Building Supply website which is a great curation tool for non-toxic paints, flooring and much more.

“Any change that you make is one step towards [getting rid of] some of these exposures. You have to take it in your own stride and you also have to figure out what is your thing,” Leiba said. “It takes one step at a time.”

For WellBe-approved products that will improve your indoor air quality (plus 2,000+ more researched and vetted items, from food products to sleep aids to beauty products and more), check out the WellBe Non-Toxic Product Database.

 

Citations:

  1. Samet, Jonathan M et al. “Indoor Air Pollution and Cardiovascular Disease: New Evidence From Iran.” Circulation vol. 133,24 (2016): 2342-4. doi:10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.116.023477
  2. Raju, Sarath et al. “Indoor Air Pollution and Respiratory Health.” Clinics in chest medicine vol. 41,4 (2020): 825-843. doi:10.1016/j.ccm.2020.08.014
  3. Mu, Jingyi, and Jian Kang. “Indoor Environmental Quality of Residential Elderly Care Facilities in Northeast China.” Frontiers in public health vol. 10 860976. 4 May. 2022, doi:10.3389/fpubh.2022.860976
  4. Gruenwald, Talor et al. “Population Attributable Fraction of Gas Stoves and Childhood Asthma in the United States.” International journal of environmental research and public health vol. 20,1 75. 21 Dec. 2022, doi:10.3390/ijerph20010075
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