Breathless by Woodford Chris;

Author:Woodford, Chris;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Icon Books
Published: 2021-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Built-in pollution

Trying to banish air pollution from our homes is bound to be a losing battle when it’s built into their fabric from the start. Just think of all the brilliant building materials people have used over the years that turned out to be not so wonderful in the end. Lead, as we saw in Chapters 3 and 5, is probably the most notorious example, variously blamed for everything from high rates of homicides and teen pregnancies to the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. Or how about asbestos? In ancient times, that rocky mineral fibre was considered such a marvellous insulator and flame-retardant that, over 2,000 years ago, the Buddhist King Ashoka proudly presented his friend the King of Ceylon with a fireproof asbestos towel as a gift. Today, the King of Ceylon would take that as an insult and get straight on the phone to his personal-injury lawyer. (You can’t type ‘asbestos’ into a search engine without being bombarded by advertisements for mercenary law firms who’ll help you sue for compensation.) Left alone, asbestos is perfectly fine; once disturbed, it releases dusty fibres that will scar your lungs if you breathe them, increasing the risk of more serious illnesses such as lung cancer and mesothelioma (a cancer that attacks the linings of body organs).[17]

It’s not just our homes and the things we use to clean them, but the furniture and fittings we pack inside them. Hands up if you’re addicted to flat-pack furniture? Build-it-yourself, pressed-wood bookshelves, cabinets, laminate floors and similar products (made from particle board, fibreboard and plywood) are held together by resin-type glues that are based on (and give off) formaldehyde – a pungent chemical used to preserve dead bodies that can hasten the decay and departure of still-living ones. At best, it provokes teary eyes and nausea; at worst, at unusually high levels of exposure, it causes cancer. Fortunately, though levels of formaldehyde can be high for a week or two after wood products are made, they fall away fairly rapidly after that (great news – unless you work in a furniture store).[18]

Whether you’re spending thousands on a new carpet or swapping your mouldy old shower curtain for a new one, the pleasure you get from your purchase could bring you real, long-term pain. New carpet smell is something we all instantly recognise, and while it might have connotations of affluence and luxury, it’s really nothing more than systematic indoor VOC pollution. Technically, this is called ‘off-gassing’: the toxic chemicals used to manufacture the carpet slowly diffusing into the room. They include controversial stain repellents like Scotchgard; dubious antimicrobial preservatives; plastic backings such as polyurethane and PVCs made with highly unpleasant isocyanates, organotins and phthalates; and a whole raft of unpleasant adhesives. If you think carpets are made of lovely things like lambswool, think again. Up to 40 per cent of the filling in some carpets and carpet tiles is filthy fly ash from coal-fired power plants, which contains toxic substances like arsenic, lead and mercury.

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