Tag Archives: Centre for Research in Environmental Epidemiology

Housework May Not Give You a Clean Bill of Health

Are you looking for an excuse to not do your housework? Well, a new study says that it may be hazardous to your health.

According to the study, cleaning as little as once a week with common cleaning sprays and air fresheners could raise the risk of asthma in adults. Other studies have linked these products with increased asthma rates among cleaning professionals, but now it’s implied that it can put others at risk.

Weekly exposure to such cleaning materials could account for as many as one in seven adult asthma cases, the researchers wrote in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

“Frequent use of household cleaning sprays may be an important risk factor for adult asthma,” says Jan-Paul Zock, an epidemiologist at the Centre for Research in Environmental Epidemiology in Barcelona, who led the study.

The most unfortunate part of the study was a lack of an alternative. Here’s the depressing catch-22: You keep a clean house, you may become asthmatic. You don’t clean enough, then the dust will get you.

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