Cleaning Tips for a Healthy Home (and Body!)

Research has long shown that cleaning chemicals worsen asthma and trigger attacks in asthmatics, so women with asthma are cautioned about using cleaners containing more toxic chemicals in work settings or at home. Recently, scientists have found that these ingredients also trigger first episodes of asthma in people who did not have the condition before. In studies, users experiencing new-onset asthma triggered by cleaning products included adults cleaning in their own homes and nurses with occupational exposure to cleaners and disinfectants.

Of course, adults aren't the only ones affected. Westinghouse says, according to a recent study, "prenatal exposure to the use of disinfectants, bleach, carpet cleaner, window cleaner, air fresheners, paints, dry cleaning fluid, aerosols and pesticides increased the risk that the young child would have persistent wheezing."

Surprisingly, toxic chemicals might not even be listed on labels for products marketed for home use. "Manufacturers are only required to list (certain) ingredients in institutional and industrial cleaners," Westinghouse explains.

Companies that sell less-toxic cleaning products often fully disclose ingredients on their labels. The Cleaning for Health program advises choosing home-use cleaners that are:

• plant- or bio-based, not petroleum-based
• biodegradable
• pH neutral
• packaged in recyclable, pump-spray bottles, not aerosol cans

For more about cleaning safely at home or work, visit Women's Voices for the Earth.

Cleaning as exercise

While using less-toxic products makes cleaning more healthful, here's another way that doing household chores can improve your life: The physical exertion you use when cleaning helps build your overall fitness. "It's burning calories, getting your heart rate up a little bit and moving your body," says Harvard Medical School associate professor of medicine Harvey B. Simon, MD, author of The No Sweat Exercise Plan: Lose Weight, Get Healthy and Live Longer.

Isabel Maples discovered this benefit of housecleaning by accident. The Virginia woman was wearing her pedometer to count steps one day when she was home from work and doing chores.

"I was just there cleaning. I'd walk up and down the stairs multiple times, sorting laundry upstairs, then bringing it to the main floor...and I'd be straightening up," she says.

At the end of her day's efforts, the pedometer showed she had logged 20,000 steps (most step-counting programs set 10,000 steps a day as a good target). When she went to work, Isabel logged only about 8,000 steps all day. "I was shocked," she says of her discovery that cleaning was a good physical activity.

For tips on using a pedometer, go here