HEALTH LUNG DISEASE Using Household Cleaning Prod
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Using Household Cleaning Products Can Be as Bad as Smoking a Pack a Day
By HALLIE DETRICK 8:24 AM EST
A 20-year longitudinal study conducted by scientists at the University of Bergen in Norway has found that using cleaning products can be as harmful as smoking 20 cigarettes a day.
The European Community Respiratory Health Survey aimed to find out more about the long-term effects of using cleaning products. The study looked at lung function in 6,230 participants in 22 locations around the world. Participants answered questions about how often they used cleaning products and had their lung function measured.
The study found that women responsible for cleaning at home or professionally suffered a more rapid decline than women who were not responsible for cleaning. The same trend was not observed in men, however. The authors did not offer a reason for this gender difference, though there were fewer men than women in the study and a smaller percentage of those men engaged in “occupational cleaning.”
Based on the results, the authors suggested that exposure to cleaning materials can be detrimental to women’s health in the long term.