Does A Dirty House Affect Your Health?

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Keeping a clean house is a necessary step in providing a safe living environment. Through proper cleaning and disinfection in the kitchen, for example, contact with disease-causing bacteria from raw or undercooked meat, shellfish, fish, and eggs can be reduced. But did you know that the products we use to clean the house can also have unintended health consequences. “There are certainly triggers to asthma in some of our household cleaning agents,” says Carol LeBlanc, PhD, of the Toxics Use Reduction Institute at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. I personally can verify that some cleaners do affect my asthma. I have found that some of the cleaners that affect me are: Oven Cleaners (I cannot use them at all) Because of concern over the increasing incidence of asthma among children, several states are taking action to mandate the use of safer cleaners in schools. New York and Massachusetts are two such states that have passed legislation or have bills pending. So in reality, just cleaning your home with certain cleaners can affect your health. Yet having a dirty home can also affect your health. Where is the line between dirty and clean homes? Is cleaning our home with harmful cleaners more important than our health?